Bay Area couple sues TRPA over Angora burn property
By Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News
Backed by a conservative legal group, a San Jose couple has taken their six-year feud with Lake Tahoe regional planners to federal court, arguing that a policy keeping them from building a house for their elderly mothers on vacant property is unconstitutional.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Ray and Teresa Burns allege that the government is violating protections against improper taking of property by denying them permits to build the South Lake Tahoe home.
The couple purchased the property in foreclosure in 2009, two years after a house on that land burned down in the 2007 Angora forest fire. The lawsuit, crafted by the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that a house had been on that same property for 30 years prior to the fire, and that the property is surrounded by other homes and businesses.
Stay in the bay. We do NOT want you.
Headline should’ve been “Burns burned by burnt property” (even more “excellent” if they have a relative named Montgomery)
You are an ass Liberule
Liberude, speak for yourself
Froggy, you are correct!
Libertool
They are using the “mother” story for sympathy. They should have explored the building options before buying the land.
Their own fault, Liberule I’m with you .
A couple of things don’t seem right here. First of all, this is not a great place to put your “elderly” mothers. You have to drive several miles to get to any services, including medical. And yes, it snows — sometimes a lot. Secondly, it’s hard to buy foreclosure properties by yourself so they either had a real estate agent that would have warned them about this or they are knowledgeable enough to know that the property might have poor or no coverage. Sounds to me like they got a “fire sale” price and want to change the rules so they can cash in.
Geez, merely making a silly play in words titled “Burns burned by burnt property” and a harmless reference to Montgomery Burns (for those unfamiliar with, a cartoon character) have apparently earned my lighthearted comment a stay in heavy-handed moderation purgatory. Its as if the moderators had never heard of “The Simpsons.” Moderation could use a little moderation sometimes lest we want to squeeze the fun out of life (or force aging Mothers to navigate icy sidewalks in their slippery golden years so their “construction project manager” offsprings can cash in on a foreclosure.)
Jab..Moderation could use a little moderation sometimes lest….”……(or force aging Mothers to navigate icy sidewalks in their slippery golden years so their”construction project manager”offsprings can cash in on a foreclosure.”
An aging “Mother” is going to think about this comment. Some coffee here and…
“I’ll be back”
The parcel has 1% coverage and an allocation. The person had to have seen the parcel covered in water after the angora fire if they purchased it in 2009. Everyone in Tahoe knows that you can’t dewater a stream zone and build anything. Unless your the usfs… It’s really negligence on their part for not following the Tahoe standards which we all sometimes hate and have grown to accept. Assuming you can build because a structure used to exist is a poor argument.
Yep. Bay Area idiots. Even worse than sac idiots.
OK from the evil side of me…. Ya think they might want their elderly mothers far away so someone else has to deal with them in a emergency? As my mother aged, I wanted her as close as possible so it was a few minutes from my house to her house when needed…. I could get there before the paramedics. I didn’t build her a home far away so that when she passed I would have a lovely vacation getaway or rental property.
Undoubtedly the greatest part about this case is the fact they lawyered-up with Sacto, Esq by arming themselves with elderly Mothers. Not just one, mind you; it’s like a double-barrel loaded with mothers. And as the plaintiffs appear to be a married couple, technically their mothers are also mother-in-laws to each other who apparently must be best buds to live peacefully under the same roof. This is not a lawsuit; this is sitcom gold.
I would agree with you all that something is fishing about the foreclosure purchase and why they did not know the coverage issue at hand. But why do some of you guys dislike us flat landers so much. With 40% of the properties in SLT owned by us vacation homers you would think you would love the property taxes we pay ($6000/year for me) to get a week a month escape to the mountains while offsetting your own tax bill !!!
Be nice and pick the right issues to go after….the rising crime and drug dealers in SLT so we would all enjoy the serenity of the mountains together.
Librule… Perhaps all of us flatlanders, including those who have lived here, 20, 30 and 40 years should go home. We’ll leave our jobs as teachers, firefighters, waiters, doctors, cashiers, etc. We’ll close up our businesses that support this economy and leave the mountains to the small percentage of you who were born and actually stayed here. You are sounding an awful lot like Trump. Maybe you’d like to build a wall. Maybe babies born from bay area parents, you know, the anchor babies, should leave too.