This is fucking outrageous: Grandfather in Florida in jail for no grass in front yard
 

Grandfather in Florida in jail WITH NO BAIL for no grass in front yard

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humanin...icle847365.ece

The grass is always greener.....

I toss flaming shit bags on all my neighbor's front door mats for that..

Wasting time and resources to jail some old dude who didn't water his lawn... let's start a riot.

the way the story is written it paints him to be a victim, but for all we know when he 'ignored' the requests, he did it with a middle finger and attitude. I find it hard to believe that he couldn't have found someone or some business to help him with the cost of sodding the yard. Maybe he's just an asshole that no one wanted to help.

That is outrageous. My area says we should sweep the dead leaves on the pavement/gutter around our property. I never bother as a few others too. When it rains, they all get washed away down the storm drains anyway. I received a complaint letter once, to which I replied "you also say we should upkeep the pavement, yet there are at least 15 houses with broken pavements due to tree root activity. This is far more of a risk to people than a few dead leaves. Fix that then I'll clean the leaves."

The guy had turf, but it went brown due to lack of watering. And so frikkin what? Buy a tonne of weed seed, if it exists, and sprinkle it all over. Those little suckers grow in concrete. Surely they don't say your lawn has to be perfect? Just green.

I think someone needs to drive through the complex with a few super soakers filled with gasoline and ruin some more lawns...

seriously? damage the people's lawns that followed the rules? what if your lawn was damaged cuz some crusty old dude didn't follow the rules?

Homeowners association's can be a bitch.

Stupid as hell and wasting tax dollars, but he went against a court order.

There is more to the story than this ...... Any neighborhood with deed restrictions like that and the commitment to enforce them must be pretty nice. What kind of sane person would let his lawn go because he can't afford a $10.00 sprinkler. I'm sure one of immediate neighbors would loan him one for a couple hours a day. Plus in Florida it rains pretty regularly.

Restrictions like that are meant to preserve property values. Fuck him .... hope his cell mate is into GILF ......


.

o gosh......

OMg this is crazy!

Nothing that a little astro turf wouldn't solve.

It's outrageous that he was jailed for this but at the same time it's not that hard to maintain a lawn. You don't need to purchase sod when a rake and some cheap grass seed would easily accomplish the same thing.

If you have no money, your car was taken because you have no money, your house payment goes up because of the type of loan you have. You can't fight it in court because you have no money... $10 is like $100,000 to them..

Sodding a yard is $1000's of dollars too and a broken sprinkler system can easily be $100's of dollars, that's if you can do it yourself.

If a person is broke, they don't ever deserve to go to jail for it... period.

It's stupid for the association to go through all this, through court, then end up sodding it for him, fine him more, on money he doesn't have. When they could have prob spent $1000's less and just did the yard for him from the start.


In his case, once out of Jail, I would dig all the sod up and burn it..

http://www.tampabay.com/multimedia/a...8a_41576c.jpeg

His lawn doesn't even look that bad.

When you move into 'hoods with associations and covenants, you get fucked because there is always at least one uptight prick with nothing better to do than serve as a mini Hitler on the community

All true ... but he could/should have borrowed one. And after all this is in Florida not Arizona. I think he was just trying to prove a point, was being stubborn and the association responded in kind.


.

Borrowed what exactly? It sounds like they were under financial pressure and nobody would have given them money.

Anyway, I think it's pretty crazy that he went to jail and I definitely do not like HOA's, but it's not like this guy was completely innocent. He was sent notices for months and simply ignored them. Financial hardship is not just an excuse to get out of everything... everyone can have "financial hardship". It sucks, but deal with it or at least create a solution.

The ideal solution, to me, seems that the HOA should pay to have it fixed as sort of a "loan" with some restrictions and guidelines. The yard gets fixed, neighbors are happy, grandpa isn't in jail, public resources are not wasted, and the HOA actually makes itself useful.

The article states he lived in the house since 1998 and the grass withered after his sprinkler broke. I mean what the fuck, use your thumb on the hose, borrow a nozzle or buy one for 50 cents at a garage sale.


.

not
 

this is not an outrage. This is absolutely great news. I wish they would put all the poor white trash in my nieghborhood in jail for their shitty ass front years. Instead they go back and forth to court every 6 months pleading how they cant take care of their own fuckinn lawn.

Fixing an irragation system has nothing to do with money. Its LAZINESS. pvc pipes and fittings are $2 each.

Fucking lazy bastard doesnt give a fuck about bringing down the values of the hosues around him cause he is too fucking lazy to dig a fucking ditch and fix his irragation.

ROT IN JAIL YOU PIECE OF SHIT.

lol ... what kind of lazy ass can't grow grass in Florida?


.

That's just messed up. Way to spend taxes! On a poor old man who couldn't afford his grass... :( I don't care if people want to follow the law to a T, there should be clauses and crap for certain situations that should allow empathy and understanding to prevail in such cases.

Considering his whole family just moved in... it isn't like this is an old feeble man that can't get any housework done.

What? Please feel sorry for me my sprinkler doesn't work?

you obviosuly dont live in Florida. You cant plant grass with seed. you have to buy sod. its $100 a pallet for 500 sq ft.

but regardless, this mother fucker signed an agreement and knew he had to keep his lawn looking good when moving into this neighborhood. He was just a lazy old man.

I fix everytones irragation systems in my neighborhood for free cause plumbing is actually fun for me. I mkae them do the digging. this way everyoens lawn looks great on my street and keeps the whole street looking better then the other streets, raising the value of my house.

Bootm line is, he is lazy. All he had to do was ask a few neighbors for help, i gaurantee you one of them would have helped him, unless hes a mean old timer.

I think if most people here had a NICE old person living next door that needed very minor help with his lawn upkeep we would gladly help. This sounds like some crotchety old fuck that doesn't give a shit and years of neglect has ruined his yard.

In this economy why not? He's in jail because he would rather pay for a place to live rather than pay for grass. However I do agree with some of you. He could have asked for help and found a cheap alternative to watering his lawn, although I thought sprinklers were reasonably priced. I'm just saying it is a ridiculous reason for an old man to go to jail. If you are unable to stick to the terms of your living arrangement then you might as well move because the terms remain the same. I think he wasted his time ignoring the warnings and it is his fault he is in jail for doing it so blatantly. Still, it is a waste of tax payers money. :2 cents:

I get what your saying :2 cents::upsidedow

amazed at some of the responses here

well i shouldnt be, but i am

This has to be the first time someone has done time for not doing grass.

This guy is old and is going to die soon anyway. His life could be made useful if he bought a Glock 17 and executed the association at their next meeting.

You know what, you're right... And after reading some other responses I'm siding with the HOA now. That's what I get for skimming an article a few minutes after waking up...

The replies in this thread are sickening.

Honestly, you people are what's wrong with this world.

No one should go to jail for this. Let me say that again. No one should be put in jail for having an imperfect lawn. Now, take a better look at that photo. That lawn puts a grandfather with a heart condition in jail indefinitely WITHOUT BAIL until it's green again because he couldn't afford sod. There was no indication that anyone even tried to help him or work with him. People in this thread are making a lot of assumptions. The costs involved in keeping him in jail, etc.. at taxpayer expense are adding up.

Incorrect. He is in jail for contempt of court.

It sounds like he didn't bother showing up to court. You would think he could have represented himself in court and just explained his situation to the judge and the judge would most likely have, if not sided with him, given him some options or helped to work out some kind of an agreement.

Anytime you just give the finger to the court they don't respond well.

All that said, it is a pretty shitty thing to do when someone is having trouble and the home owners association sues you. Whoever heads that association should be punched in the face by Kimbo.

That's the culmination of the original problem. The contempt charge is because he couldn't afford to pay for it, which the judge ordered. It shouldn't have been taken this far and that goes for all parties not just the grandfather. The HOA seems inefficient to me and would rather spend a lot of money and cost the taxpayers instead, while in the meantime the lawn is still the same but now the grandfather is unable to do much about it while he's in jail without bail.

so in a time of economic crisis in this country the guy is stuck between a rock and a hard place, does he not pay his mortgage and lose the home that he just re-sodded or does he continue to pay his mortgage and wait until he has the money to do his lawn without sacrificing his home, obviously he's having financial troubles if his car got repoed

putting sod down on an entire home can be quite expensive especially when they want the front and backyards done, and who's to say the sod will keep especially because his sprinkler system is broken which i'm sure is also quite out of reach for this guy to fix. the sod would just brown up and die and then they'd be filing another complaint and he'd be god only knows how many months behind on mortgage payments.

and good luck getting a bank to lend you money to sod your lawn especially when your getting shit repoed

so basically they are fucking this guy no matter how you look at it if i was him i'd tell them to fuck off too

and then they hit him with $800 in fines so what do they expect i'm sure he didn't have that money to just dish out either

our entire justice system is fucked..... the prison system is a money making machine and as long as they keep the people and money flowing all the cocksuckers are happy

The day his sprinklers broke he made the decision to allow the most valuable asset he will ever own to gradually lose it's value. BECAUSE HE WOULDN"T WATER HIS LAWN!

Why should the neighbors have to put up with his shit?