This is like a microcosm of all the NIMBY crap that's slowed housing construction to a crawl in every major US city. Neighbors get to object to things already explicitly allowed by law, a total lack of objective standards, ex post facto changes of standards...
I have no problem with backyard chickens but I do dislike this issue being used by libertarians as a wedge. Property rights shouldn’t be sacrosanct over and above reasonable restrictions by the broader community.
I don't see the issue you see here. It seems like the city fucked things up and is now penalizing the woman to cover up their own incompetence. One would think that any sensible person would object to this, not just libertarians.
That's true, but "neighbors have a veto over whether you can do X" is an untenable way to manage those property rights. A bigger city would codify limits on what you can do with waterfowl or whatever. Douglas doesn't even have a city attorney.
I can understand having restrictions against chickens in an area, but "you can do this unless a single neighbor objects" is a crazy way of handling it imo.
I guess it depends. There's been a major issue in the UK for a while regarding quite a few very iconic, decades old, live music venues. Back in the day they were in less salubrious areas of town so no one really cared, but now they're prime property with very expensive flats being put up all around them.
Many of the new residents never even do so much as even visit the area before buying them, and then immediately (and sadly often successfully) put in noise complaints attempting to get the venues shut down, despite the already strict licensing laws (curfew at 10.30 at the absolute latest, no outside drinking etc).
Really hard to over-emphasize just how small Douglas MI is; it's about 1,000 people total. An afternoon's walking distance down the beach from where they shot the ending of Road to Perdition, though.
I don't know how much there is to learn from batty ordinances in tiny rural towns (western Michigan is a special kind of rural; there's some farming, but the biggest industry is hospitality for Chicagoans driving up in the summer).
Uh… It sucks that the city didn’t correctly follow the process, but I agree with them on the underlying object-level point: you should not be able to raise loud, dirty animals in a non-rural area if your neighbors don’t want you to.
Is this not a rural location? I'm not sure what the definition is, but it's 10x lower population density than the city I grew up in, which isn't particularly dense.
This place is a tiny village, like 1,300 people, the problem here is likely someone from the city, maybe from Chicago, who moved to where they family use to own a summer cabin or launch boats out onto the lake, and then got pissed when they realized the locals grew up rural and didn't just do tourist things and like to raise animals like chickens. Ain't nobody from that town that hasn't regularly smelled chicken and cow shit and heard chickens cawing every morning their entire lives that would even notice they were there.
> the lawsuit notes that the ordinance's wording still inherently runs afoul of due process rights. That's because the ordinance provides no clear standard, no ability for Sarkisian to appeal or contest her neighbor's complaint, and no right to a hearing. According to PLF's complaint, this effectively gives her neighbor "a standardless and unreviewable veto over Kathy's use of her own property."
NIMBY policy in a nutshell: All power goes to those who object.
It's strange that the city made the mistake of issuing the permit but is now trying to retroactively un-permit the chickens because one person complained.
Stories like this and even the more casual HOA stories make me glad I live in an area where most families are too busy with their lives to be nit picking minutia in their neighbors' yards.
With a few cameras it's probably possible to automatically determine how noisy are people in any given neighborhood, "More than 50% of the people here spend more than 80% of their day at home", maybe there should be a standard measure for it, NIMBYness-meter.
I see this all the time in the private sector where if just 1 person in a team objects to a decision, the team has to jump thru many hoops to make something barely reasonable happen
What happened to "just deal with it?"
I think it's viewed that those words are too cruel, or not nice. But actually, when you give up those words, you end up with a society far more cruel and not nice.
Ha! What is your context? I had trouble finding a dentist. One did a filling and then sent me on my way. I said, Don’t you use that blue paper to find the contact points and adjust the bite?
> Even if the city had followed the proper timing protocols for neighbor objections, the lawsuit notes that the ordinance's wording still inherently runs afoul of due process rights. That's because the ordinance provides no clear standard, no ability for Sarkisian to appeal or contest her neighbor's complaint, and no right to a hearing. According to PLF's complaint, this effectively gives her neighbor "a standardless and unreviewable veto over Kathy's use of her own property."
That’s a great way to frame the argument against Karens and NIMBYs general attitude. What right do they have to an unreviewable veto? They should at least have to prove something a public nuisance or or source of harm.
Reminds me of my dads town. The town planner from the regional council came through to ping him on having a gravel driveway, and to cause problems with his heritage listed property having humans living in it. While he was in town he found someone with 1 more chicken than the regional council allows (7 when they decided on 6). Never mind its a town of 40 people that's effectively a bunch of farmhouses placed together on the same stretch of highway.
What do people have against chickens? Roosters should not be allowed but hens aren't loud or particularly smelly at all. Dogs can be a much bigger nuisance.
Why? We have a rooster. He protects the hens. He crows in the morning, just like dogs bark, and F-250s rev past the neighborhood road. Where do you think chickens come from in the first place?
It's just another small step to say "hens should not be allowed"
Because I have a right to sleep peacefully in the morning until a certain time. Just like I cannot host loud dance parties at 2AM on a Saturday or start mowing my lawn at 6AM on a Sunday. For people to coexist peacefully in a society, there have to be reasonable boundaries.
Ironically, the article depicts the homeowner holding a rooster; I can see why a neighbor would be pissed.
Backyard hens are thing in my city (dancing around HOA is another issue altogether), but our ordinance makes it abundantly clear that roosters are not permitted.
A former neighbor had chickens and didn't keep their coop properly secured. Coincidentally, the neighborhood raccoons were also the fattest, roundest animals I've ever seen.
It's also a culinary thing. I grow my own vegetables because they taste much better than what's in the store. Chickens raised in a small-scale chicken coop environment tend to taste much better than those raised in factory conditions.
Chickens are so much nicer to have around than almost any other pet. They won't bark all night, or maul a child, or leave dead birds on your doorstep. Such a weird thing to get mad about.
> Sarkisian had spent $23,000 building a chicken coop and a privacy fence to shield the chickens from view
I'd like to get a look at all that, it seems extremely excessive for 6 hens. I think I spent just over 1k total for 18!
Nothing wrong with that, sounds like she either got took, or built them quite the palace.
The dogs in my neighbourhood are much louder than my chickens. Literally measured this with a decibel meter. I can hear the neighbours dog barking while I’m in my bed. I can’t hear my chickens.
"No True Scotsman" fallacy. Dogs kept as pets have done this.
My neighbor's dog, acquired as an adult, got overstimulated and attacked both husband and wife. The vet suggested the dog was exposed to trauma before their ownership, and had a PTSD reaction.
We should be encouraging people to produce food, not severely punishing someone for it. Do we need a campaign for a right to basic agriculture? This reminds me a lot of the right to repair, in that it feels like a violation of how we expect to be able to use our property.
I read something recently, I think it was on HN or linked to from discussion, about something like the opposite. And it was argued something like national security over the price effect it could have on agriculture across state or national borders. Likely ridiculous, but may have had some semi-rationalising nuance. I would have thought the US, of all places, wouldn't be placing such restrictions on liberty.
I might be cross-linking a couple of different things though, so hold back that outrage.
But, yes, I agree. It would also give more people an understanding of what real (non-mass-produced, heirloom) fruits and vegetables taste like. And eggs (my better half regularly buys eggs from a student at the school, the same student also, every morning, tends to the school's vegetable garden with autistic dedication and attention). Meat is a bit more difficult.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 45.6 ms ] threadMany of the new residents never even do so much as even visit the area before buying them, and then immediately (and sadly often successfully) put in noise complaints attempting to get the venues shut down, despite the already strict licensing laws (curfew at 10.30 at the absolute latest, no outside drinking etc).
I don't know how much there is to learn from batty ordinances in tiny rural towns (western Michigan is a special kind of rural; there's some farming, but the biggest industry is hospitality for Chicagoans driving up in the summer).
NIMBY policy in a nutshell: All power goes to those who object.
It's strange that the city made the mistake of issuing the permit but is now trying to retroactively un-permit the chickens because one person complained.
Stories like this and even the more casual HOA stories make me glad I live in an area where most families are too busy with their lives to be nit picking minutia in their neighbors' yards.
I see this all the time in the private sector where if just 1 person in a team objects to a decision, the team has to jump thru many hoops to make something barely reasonable happen
What happened to "just deal with it?"
I think it's viewed that those words are too cruel, or not nice. But actually, when you give up those words, you end up with a society far more cruel and not nice.
“You’ll get used to it.”
That’s a great way to frame the argument against Karens and NIMBYs general attitude. What right do they have to an unreviewable veto? They should at least have to prove something a public nuisance or or source of harm.
Why? We have a rooster. He protects the hens. He crows in the morning, just like dogs bark, and F-250s rev past the neighborhood road. Where do you think chickens come from in the first place?
It's just another small step to say "hens should not be allowed"
Because I have a right to sleep peacefully in the morning until a certain time. Just like I cannot host loud dance parties at 2AM on a Saturday or start mowing my lawn at 6AM on a Sunday. For people to coexist peacefully in a society, there have to be reasonable boundaries.
> just like dogs bark...
And that's not allowed either. Check out answers at https://www.reddit.com/r/Georgia/comments/17kpm52/barking_do... or https://www.reddit.com/r/homeowners/comments/13r23zc/would_i...
Ironically, the article depicts the homeowner holding a rooster; I can see why a neighbor would be pissed.
Backyard hens are thing in my city (dancing around HOA is another issue altogether), but our ordinance makes it abundantly clear that roosters are not permitted.
That’s for six chickens. They must lay golden eggs for that to pay off.
> Sarkisian had spent $23,000 building a chicken coop and a privacy fence to shield the chickens from view
I'd like to get a look at all that, it seems extremely excessive for 6 hens. I think I spent just over 1k total for 18!
Nothing wrong with that, sounds like she either got took, or built them quite the palace.
My neighbor's dog, acquired as an adult, got overstimulated and attacked both husband and wife. The vet suggested the dog was exposed to trauma before their ownership, and had a PTSD reaction.
I might be cross-linking a couple of different things though, so hold back that outrage.
But, yes, I agree. It would also give more people an understanding of what real (non-mass-produced, heirloom) fruits and vegetables taste like. And eggs (my better half regularly buys eggs from a student at the school, the same student also, every morning, tends to the school's vegetable garden with autistic dedication and attention). Meat is a bit more difficult.
Hands in the dirt is good for mental health too.
No asking for permission with the town because of course they'll have something bureaucratic and dumb thing to say.
We're on good terms with all the neighbors, and just mentioned the chickens in passing. Everyone was excited to get eggs. It was a neighborly project.
We live in small town Maine, where I guess we do things differently than in Michigan.
True for a lot of ordinances.