Balconey? Is that a balcony in South Brooklyn?
Did the developers at least send a nice bottle of Amontillado to the couple?
You’d think that in Australia, of all places, there’d be pretty strong zoning laws on how far new construction needs to be from existing buildings.
It is the sort of place where baloney is served.
Get your paints out, be very creative!
The abut-ment is too damn high.
“Fuck you”, saith the council.
What about windows from the floors below her balcony? I’m guessing there aren’t any but with this insanity who knows.
She should invite the people responsible for a visit. Ask them directly what they think of the view…
Entombed? You mean, you feel like all the millions of people who live in apartments without balconies?
(unless this happens to be the ONLY view to the outside in her apartment, then, I guess, I can sympathize)
To be fair, it does make it harder to commit suicide.*
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- Take that, Australia!
Welcome to the Zone Wars. Was her building built according to the proper zoning relating to the property line? Here in my old city there’s lots of places where a rowhouse was demolished and in the decades after the buildings next door pierced the wall for windows on that side. But the empty lot is still zoned to build to the property line.
There’s a very similar case in the news right now where balconies overlooking the neighboring lot are threatened by the owner of the lot wanting a variance to build to a very high coverage %. It pits new urbanists wanting density against existing residents wanting everything to stay the same as the day they moved in.
There goes the neighbourhood.
There are, but if you have enough money and you can take the town planners out for enough boozy lunches with hookers you don’t have to worry about them.
These people can take comfort in the knowledge that if their objection had got through it probably would have been ignored anyway.
Aussie here, but from Victoria. I have just been through the process of trying to stop a huge development across the street from my house. After all our careful work it came down to the developer helping councillors get elected by displaying their signs in his front yard before elections. He is their friend and he gets what he wants.
She paid good money for a location that blocked out other people’s view of the harbour; now someone is blocking her view! Outrage!
If Block Mania ensues, the Judge Dredd writers are entitled to royalties.
They would, if they could even hear any objections over the sound of property developer fellatio.
Perth has had a crazy housing market for a while now. During my life it’s always been rapidly adding suburbs, but a combination of things like negative gearing, the mining boom, and increased demand for inner city living has meant there’s been a big market for expensive apartments in inner city suburbs. The office I work in was built a decade ago next to some warehouses. Now we’ve been overbuilt by 7-story apartment blocks you can live in for a minimum of $600,000.
Developers knew this was a limited window and have been pumping out apartment buildings as quickly as possible in desirable areas. A structural engineer I know is amazed at some of the expensive techniques being used just to shave weeks off the build times. They’re not worried about maybe having to buy out an owner next door. The mining boom is over, the property market is weakening and a months delay for negotiating and redesigning could cost them millions.
(Protip for potential property investors in Perth: Give it a year or so for the mining layoffs to kick in fully, see what happens with negative gearing leading into the upcoming election, and then look at buying. The market isn’t likely to go up a huge amount, but it’s an open question as to how much it could go down. I am 100% an expert and not just a guy with a mortgage wishing I’d waited a few years before I bought)
she said. “I feel like I am in a concrete coffin.”
Living in a coffin myself (first floor apartment in Brooklyn with a train rattling by) made of shitty wood and plaster, I’d kill for one made of concrete, at least then I could get some decent sleep while I’m in there…Man I miss the Chinatown projects. Those things were (literal) bomb shelters.
