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[lorimar]

A family of blacks have moved into my neighborhood. I am not trying to be racis, but they don't get up in the morning and work. They make a lot of noise at night. I see them in their front yard drinking alcohol and smoking things that might be marijuana. Speaking of their yard, it has not been cut since they moved in.

I am very concerned that the property of my home is falling. I don't mean to offend anyone, but it is a common fact that when blacks move in people move out. What steps can I take to save the value of my home? Are there any laws in place to help force this family to leave. They obviously do not care about the neighborhood or its people.

Please help.

[karlitis]

I would vote for republicans.
Or try to earn more money from my job to compensate and move out.

[wardell]

Last I checked, this is America and people are pretty much free to live where they want. About the best you can do is if the grass gets too high, you can complain to the health department since long grass could harbor various critters that are unsafe. Unless your town or county has an ordinance against drinking on your own property, that would be pretty much legal also (good thing since I have the occasional beer on my front porch)...and I have never seen any place where normal folks move out when a black family moves in - I have, on the other hand, seen ignorant people move out when a black family moves in, which usually makes the neighborhood better.

[wakeley58]

Boy, you sound like my great grandma.
What she did: She found another smaller house in a neighborhood outside the city. Time to move out of the innner city.
We all love grandma, we just put up with her racism.

[barclay76]

Jack, you may not be trying to sound racist but the reality is that you ARE racist.

Your neighbor's race and their lack of upkeep of their home has absolutely ZERO impact on your home's market value or property assessment (tax) value. So I'll save you the time and energy wasting it on dwelling on this insignificant thought.

In the city I live in, there's a very desirable pocket that has a lot of old character homes. The average decent home there starts at $800K and the neighbors are police known gangsters who sell drugs and have lots of guns and have police records including murder. For some reason, homes in that area have been and continue to be purchased and sold within 1-3 weeks of hitting the market at full price, if not higher. So your notion that their race or their lack of upkeep will affect you is ridiculous.

It's a free country and there are NO laws forcing them to leave unless they aren't paying their mortgage etc and they go into foreclosure, or if they're renting and they stop paying rent and get evicted. Other than that, you're sh** out of luck. Unless you're selling, your property value has no relation to their house condition or who the residents are.