ALL THINGS REAL ESTATE

Country living doesn’t always live up to one’s expectations

Q: I wrote to you about 12 years ago regarding a neighbor’s tree and you were kind enough to publish my letter – your answer was more than helpful in solving the problem. Now I’m back. My husband and I moved to a 5-acre lot between Vacaville and Winters, though we aren’t tech nically in either city. We moved here to retire. We wanted some acreage for horses, maybe a good-sized garden, and just because we were tired of living in the suburbs. The problem is the “neighborhood” makes me feel like I’m driving through a Third World country. Many of the neighboring parcels are stockpiled with old rusted cars and other eyesores that I think anyone would consider trash. There are at least two parcels that are owned by guys running different sorts of construction businesses, which causes a lot of heavy equipment to be stored in plain sight. And, of course, they drive those vehicles up and down our two-lane road all day long. So my question is whether there are any laws that require property owners to keep their properties out here in a civilized manner? Is this really just part of country living in Solano County? Maybe the ’burbs weren’t so bad after all?

A: The short answer to your legal question is the classic “yes and no” answer. But before I get into that, the answer to your more general question about being a part of country living is often “yes.”

People move to the country for many reasons, but among them is the desire to store stuff. Often a lot of stuff!

Whether that’s cement mixers, backhoes or old cars, you need ground to park them on, and the rural areas in the county provide the cheapest

Tim Jones

experiencing, many more homeowners move to the country with

Had you moved to a far more expensive area, the economics of the location would have limited the owners who use their properties as a corporate yard for their business or, worse, a junkyard.

But be that as it may, there are likely some things you can do and the county has a departdeal with this issue.

In 1993, the county supervisors established the Solano County Code Compliance Department. Their mission is to enforce the rather large body of county and state laws regulating what property owners can and can’t do in rural areas.

So let’s talk about old, abandoned and rusted cars.

Chapter 6.5 of the county code, which you can Google for yourself, gives the county broad discretion to deal with rusted junkers.

Keeping in mind that one person’s junker is another person’s waiting-to-be-rebuilt classic car, a county code compliance officer can come out and take a look. This applies to cars on private property as well as public.

If the officer deems that the car is in such a bad condition it can be inferred the owner intended to abandon it, the car can be towed. Maybe. Someday.

Although it’s not quite that

See Jones, Page 14