For more than a year, and probably much longer, the city of Bloomington has been trying to convince Joe Davis to take a more conventional approach to his South Washington Street house and yard.
But Davis describes himself as an “unconventional guy.” Parked in the backyard with building materials stacked on them are a truck, and a van with a trailer. The county’s online property lookup system has aerial imagery showing the two vehicles sitting in the backyard at least as far back as 2014.
Davis has old bathtubs arranged around the place as catchment basins, and a compost pile.
Davis describes the place as an active building site, where he’s been working to renovate the house. He bought the place in 2009 for $65,000. He has described how the house was damaged by fire before he bought it and had sat abandoned for two years.
During that period all the pipes burst because there was no heat, the wiring was stolen and homeless people were living, Davis has said.
Where Davis sees an “organic building site,” the city sees a raft of code violations.
So next Tuesday’s meeting of Bloomington’s board of public works marks the start of another chapter in the saga of attempts to enforce city code against Davis’s property. Continue reading “Skirmishing over “garbage” between homeowner, city of Bloomington set for next week”
