Sorry, LONG.

This evening at the Town Board meeting they will be voting on whether or not to classify the original duplex we purchased back in March to a duplex. They have been dragging their feet for well over 5 months now.

to recap, we "purchased" a fire damaged multi use bldg that burned last Christmas. It is in a multi use zoned area and almost all the bldgs surrounding it are multi family. It sits in a wedge or triangle piece of property with access from two different streets.

At the planning board meeting they turned us down b/c some jamoke "turned it into a SFH" back in 2009 by taking out load bearing walls. The code enforcer at the time from the now dissolved village OKed it. I thought it would be a slam dunk since the bldg was originally multi use, but no.

The town and planning board are on a mission to greatly reduce if not eliminate private landlords altogether. They just approved a big new build commercial apt complex down the road from our properties probably funded almost entirely from taxpayer grants.

Members of the planning board even recall going to the dentist who set up shop on one side of this building with an apartment in the back. I had to pull out all the stops at the next board meeting with a glossy presentation, etc. and they then tabled it.

The building design is a "mock up" or exact replica on one side as the other; two staircases, two kitchens, separate metering,etc. It was even admitted that the guy who "turned it into a single" and eventually went into tax foreclosure, made it a single to escape the multi family water bill excise charge. This particular county has some of the highest water and sewer rates in the area so the temptation is high to do this. One board member did bother to tour the place to see that this was in fact always a side by side and not an SFH.

The planning board thinks that keeping everything SFH will result in some sort of panacea i.e. Mayberry RFD and owner occupants will FLOCK to this area. Fact is that most of the bldgs including owner occupied are run down, at least on the outside in an attempt to keep their tax assessment from skyrocketing (the tax assessor is extremely zealous).

I get some of the WORST, unstable, problematic applicants for SFHs in this area. The 2 bdrm/3 bdrm units not so much. Most of this area in upstate NY is economically depressed since gov't has driven out business, manufacturing and low skilled starter jobs.

One of the council members thinks it will be a 3/2 vote in favor of turning it back to it's original state of being a duplex. Hopefully it will. DH has started the gutting and siding process and when we went to get a NYSEG (utility company) meter...they have it listed as a duplex; although they won't give me anything in writing to confirm this.

We also quickly realized that the person who bought it at the tax sale and owned it for probably less than 12 months when it burned down was running a halfway/rooming house for indigents. By trade she runs a charity house/food bank and just had a huge manufacturer/appliance several story bldg who retired "sell" her his old bldg for her charity house/food bank. Us owning this building will be a vast improvement in the neighborhood as the "charity lady" is nice but has no discernment between productive and unproductive residents.

UPDATE: THEY COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT US!!! Only 3 board members out of 5 were there. The town supervisor who is getting long in the tooth as is most of the board acted like the current prez when I said "what about our variance?" (which really isn't a variance, it is a request to go back to the way the bldg was originally intended/built. Deer in the headlights.

So they've kicked the can down the road again! I told them we are gutting the place, starting to side it, have purchased two exterior doors and need to set up with the power company (we have one electric and one gas meter in there now). Now they say it will be 12/13 that they will decide!!!

In the same meeting they lauded the new commercial 14 unit apartment that is being built but in the same breath they want to get rid of private landlords.

Some caseworker from "Family Promise" showed up and wanted to know if the new 14 units will be "affordable housing." They quickly retorted "it will be market rate rent."

The caseworker immediately started wringing her hands and said "most people can't afford $1500 for a 2 bdrm unit." I quickly corrected her in front of the board (she should know this; she was just being dramatic) and said that 2 bdrm market rate here in this town is between 850 and 950 not 1500.

Then one of the board members who toured the burned out bldg we are trying to get back to being a duplex tried to placate me and get me a tenant through "Family Promise" like he was doing me a favor in compensation for completely delaying our variance again. Umm no.

We are in the business to get market rate tenants just like the commercial 14 unit bldg.

I told DH to continue with the unit as a duplex and we will get an attorney if necessary. The code enforcer that we had a good relationship is permanently out and probably not much longer for this world. They are still "in the process" of hiring a new CE. They borrowed a CE from the next town over.

Sounds like, by ignoring it, they are giving tacit approval for you to do as you wish. They've moved on to other ' bigger fish to fry'. ( larger property so they can say they did something bigger for their voters. Yeah, right.)