Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

Losing Our Backyard

When we decided to rent the house we're currently in, we were told that we might not be able to stay here for more than a year, because the owner is a property development company, and they might have wanted to tear the house down and build a bunch of houses on this property. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that they're not tearing down this house. The bad news (at least from our perspective) is that they're going to demolish the back yard, get rid of all the trees, and put in 21 new houses very close to us.

There is so much development going on around here, and so many of the houses are so close together, that we're not too surprised to see how dense the houses are going to be. But we are surprised that they're going to be tearing up our yard starting later this month. We'd been told that we had the entire yard as part of our lease, and in fact were responsible for maintaining it. Apparently there was some miscommunication between the rental management company and the property development company who own the house, because they'd been planning on taking down the back yard. We're negotiating with them on how to handle these changes. The problems include the fact that the clearing of land is going to come within 10-15 feet of the house on two sides, which will not only be noisy (is Dorothy going to be able to take a nap with chainsaws outside her room?), but also totally eliminates the privacy we have in the master bathroom (which currently has two tall, wide windows looking out onto the yard). We also need to be reimbursed for having had a landscaper come out and clean up the back yard which is now going to be razed.

If you remember, back in January we posted what the area looks like. In contrast, here's what the plans for development look like (roughly speaking):

Pretty much all of the trees in the back yard (such as those seen here and here and probably here) are going to be removed. The front yard is being left alone, thankfully.