Reply to Massive home addition causes confusion in Fairfax County neighborhood

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can assure you that C didn't have knowledge of this thread until very recently. I highly doubt she is sitting around responding to anything here.

As a resident of this community, I can tell you that your allegations about C "riling people up" are completely false. I have gone over and over the posts on our Facebook group and I see nothing of the sort. She reached out asking a simple question, and other residents have been nothing but helpful and supportive of each other. That is very much the way our neighborhood is. No one was trying in any way to turn neighbor against neighbor. Quite a few of us, including the well known realtors in our neighborhood, are very concerned about this project. If C hadn't contacted the county, someone would have. But it is NOT mob mentality or follow the leader in any way. I know I have personally shot down comments on FB posts regarding the news stories that took an anti-immigrant approach to this. That is NOT who we are - our neighborhood is incredibly diverse and we love it. At this point, the ire is mostly directed at the county approving this and not doing due diligence. They put EVERYONE, including the homeowners building the addition, in a crappy spot. The people I have talked to and posts I have seen all seem to hope for an outcome here that doesn't punish or hurt anyone in any significant way.

I personally think the homeowner isn't being truthful, but I don't know the guy personally. This is just based on the docs I have seen from this post and elsewhere, as well as his interview. Something in my gut is telling me this isn't on the up and up. I can't prove anything at this point, and I am hoping this comes to a quick resolution for everyone.

But please stop with your ridiculous allegations about our neighborhood being "riled up". [/quote]

Thank you. It's so easy to make this fight into something it's not, on both sides of the issue.

Personally I hope that the new structure gets torn down, even if just on an apparently "minor" issue (missing 6 inches of setback), because the poor neighbor doesn't deserve such a tall building blocking out her light, and the county should have had rules on the books to avoid this in the first place. I blame the owner who initiated construction for not following the Golden Rule, more than I blame the county. Surely unspoken social etiquette and adherence to a tacit communal code matter regardless of where you originally come from. I'm an Asian foreigner, yet I would never even think of building something so intrusive to my neighbors! Perhaps this owner is a little autistic, and not sensible to unspoken rules, but I'm not going to speculate. We do need explicit rules, for people like him.

[/quote]

The golden rule? What's that? Maximize your neighbor's resale value at your own family's expense? That's not a rule.[/quote]

Or, how about not lower the value of every house on the block, including your own, and your family continues in their nice comfortable house which already has more than enough room for six people? How about being a good neighbor and not do things that detract from the safety of the neighborhood you live in also?

It wouldn’t hurt to think about how you would like your neighbors to treat you and then treat all around you the same way. Getting a plan approved and then proceeding to build differently from what the plan allows is certainly not the way one acts as a good neighbor. 
[/quote]

I agree regarding substantively sticking to a legally approved plan. But it not reasonable to expect others to put maximizing your home value over their own family's needs. A big reason people look for neighborhoods without HOAs is to avoid requirements that put form over function. The primary purpose of a house is to serve as a home, not an investment tool.

There are legitimate problems with this addition, but the general design is not one of them. The design itself is both legal and highly practical for the situation.[/quote]

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