Ordinance problems Springfield mass

I wonder if real estate and developer interests fight to get all RV's out of residential areas to better their chances of selling properties to fussy buyers at high prices. They could be in cahoots with RV storage lot owners.

I think that unused ratty looking RV's and "old-car-in-driveway" families that unintentionally degrade neighborhoods and lower property values are a large part of the problem. People who don't water or care for their yards, etc., etc. just add to the irritability of those who try to keep their properties up.
It all ends up in ordinances that can hurt RV'ers.

That's a good a point. Mine is brand new condition

People complain about HOAs, and sometimes for good reason, but at least most HOAs can't change rules on you without a fairly high hurdle. In our HOA, it takes 2/3 of the property owners to make a change. That's hard to get on ANY issue.

It's much easier for a city or town to change an ordinance, often in response to a special interest (overnight parking bans initiated by campground owners, for example).

fireflock wrote:
People complain about HOAs, and sometimes for good reason, but at least most HOAs can't change rules on you without a fairly high hurdle. In our HOA, it takes 2/3 of the property owners to make a change. That's hard to get on ANY issue.

It's much easier for a city or town to change an ordinance, often in response to a special interest (overnight parking bans initiated by campground owners, for example).

All it takes here is for one person to complain then you can't have your RV in your yard or on your property at all.

The first thing you have to do is to get, in writing, the ordinance that you are "violating". Find out exactly what it says, and when it was enacted, and WHY. Find out if it is legal if you add a large RV garage. You also need to find out how to sue the city/HOA/county to recoop the costs of widening your driveway. Then, contact the Good Sam Club; they have a lot of good info on fighting unfair RV ordinances.

We went through a similar issue back in '05 where I live. I had stored my MH on my property for 14 years, when suddenly I got a notice that I was in violation of city ordinance and had to move it. Unknown to me, the ordinance had been in effect for decades, but rarely enforced. A new council had decided to step up code enforcement, and RV owners were caught in the net.

The first thing I did was research; a lot of it. I researched the ordinance and when/why it was enacted. I researched other cities and their RV parking ordinances. I researched local storage lots in the area, and both the costs and the vandalism rates at those lots. I researched how many RV owners were in my city vs how much off-site storage was even available. I researched the fact that properties that were listed as having RV parking actually commanded higher selling prices than those without (so much for the argument that RVs lowered property values). I researched court cases. I researched supreme court cases and State Attorney General opinons (again, contact the Good Sam Club; lots of good info and tactics that have proven successful).

And then, I started to contact RV owners. In my case, the way the ordinance was written, if the RV could be seen from the street or even from a neighboring property, it was illegal. So I made flyers up alerting people to the stepped up enforcement and encouraging people to flood the next council meeting or risk losing their RV parking, and I put those flyers on the doors of every single home I could see that had an RV, trailer, boat, etc. visible.

It worked. The next council meeting was standing room only, filled past capacity with angry RV owners demanding action. The council immediately put a morotorium on the enforcement of the ordinance and agreed to work on the issue. It took more than 6 months of council meetings, planning commision meetings, and ad-hoc committee...but we kept the pressure on and won a reasonable RV parking ordinance that allowed the majority of us to keep our RVs.

BUT...and this is important...you will NOT win by yourself. You need others; lots of others, to join you in the fight. Councils could care less about 1 or 2 people complaining, but when 50 or 100 stand up in front of them, they take notice. And you need facts, not emotion. Present them with facts and figures that they can't dispute without looking like idiots (no elected official wants to look like an idiot in front of the public).

Obviously every situation is a bit different and will take a different amount of work/fight. Only you can decide whether the fight is worth it or not. Good Luck (and in the meantime, start looking for every little thing that your neighbor does that is in violation of any ordinance and turn them in for it! Nothing wrong with fighting fire with fire).

Thank you so much all the information you provided is greatly appreciated I will definitely look out for every violation that the neighbors are doing from now on and there is many of them already.I have a guy that is driving and he's legally blind he can't even mow his lawn. He can't see and is leaving big swatches of grass rows of it un- mowed now he is still driving a car and he got let go at his job because of it.
That's pretty bad

Good day
Do you know if the violation is a city zoning violation
Or is it a neighborhood association ordinance?
Zoning by law cannot be changed without allowing for grandfathering existing conditions.

It says inspection services department/zoning division

Also good Sam states that they have support for these issues but then I called them and they provided me with a phone number that was useless

Oh and as far as the regulations with the zoning in grandfathering in they told me that because I had a different RV they were not going to grandfather in the first notice that I received for my old 1980 trailer because now I got a brand-new class c. So the pre-existing notice doesn't apply to the new RV