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A variation of this rinsing out of any local culture is going on in Sacramento County California, where arguably gentrification has resulted in a 2019 autocrati

A variation of this rinsing out of any local culture is going on in Sacramento County California, where arguably gentrification has resulted in a 2019 autocratic edict that residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-is-illegal-to-work-on-your-car-in-your-garage-i/155378/page1/ https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-is-illegal-to... Since Sacramento County is approx 50% white, 50% hispanic/black, a case can be made this is a racist law given the relatively high number of hispanics and black who work on their cars, including car clubs such as the Austin tradition. This is culturally very unhealthy given how fundamental freedom of movement is to the US zeitgeist, and how important car culture is as the core of US life.

quantified 6y ago
Sounds like a place in need of “right to repair”
mips_avatar 6y ago
Wow one of my life goals is to have a house with a proper workshop. Guess that won’t happen in Sacramento.
jimbob45 6y ago
https://code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Programs/Pages/AutoRepair.aspx https://code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Programs/Pages/AutoRe... These rules are draconian. "[Prohibited if conducted] outside a fully enclosed garage or accessory structure and resulting in the vehicle being inoperable for a period in excess of 24 hours." On the other hand, if you're rich enough to live there, you're probably rich enough to have a large enough enclosure where you can skirt the law anyway.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  It's even worse than that. Major repairs are prohibited even in a fully enclosed garage. Minor repairs are prohibited in a great many cases as well. If I use a torque wrench to reinstall my wheels (even in a garage), I'm in violation. If I change the brakes on a friend's or girlfriend's car (even in a garage), I'm in violation. If I plug a flat tire for a neighbor or a passing motorist in my garage, I'm in violation. If I start a brake change in the driveway on Sunday morning and need a part from the parts store that I get and install on Monday, I'm in violation. I've certainly done all of those things and am not seen as a "bad neighbor".
  - wrycoder 6y ago
    LOL. I remember a curbside valve job I did fifty years ago after I blew a head gasket. I think I had the hood up a total of four hours - two hours remove, two hours replace. Chevy V-8s are easy and there were no emission controls in those days to clutter things up. No one said a word.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Seriously, how does any and all of this(along with the whole idea of HOAs) mesh at all with the "land of the free" idea that Americans are constantly broadcasting to the world. It's meant to be the most "free" country in the world and yet so many people are happy to live in communities that restrict them severely in what they can do with their own property. How is the response to any of this anything other than "mind your own damn business?"
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      keep in mind we are talking about a city in california. the "mind your own damn business" crowd has mostly self-sorted elsewhere.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      The freedom isn't evenly distributed.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      HOAs are at least voluntary and hyper-local associations. I hope to never live in housing covered by an HOA (and I can avoid it), but I support other people who willingly or actively prefer to live under those arrangements. Restrictions that an HOA might adopt can be more carefully tailored to the residents there than a city-wide ban on using tools not commonly found in a residence on a car. (Imagine if this law applied to electronics repair. "Sorry, most people don’t have a Pentalobe screwdriver, so no Apple portable repairs for you; take it to a shop like a good little consumer!")
  - SilasX 6y ago
    Stupid question and probably tangential at this point, but: Torque wrenches aren't commonly found in people's homes?
billylindeman 6y ago
what the actual fuck. as someone who grew up in metro detroit this disgusts me.
flatline 6y ago
Do white people not work on their cars? The most obnoxious (and awesome) cars I’ve lived next to were owned by white people. There is definitely a latino car culture where I live but I’ve been other places where it’s all old white dudes. Seriously wtf Sacramento?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Do white people not work on their cars? Rich (mostly) white people who want these kinds of laws and draft them on behalf of their constituents don't. This is basically a blue collar vs white collar thing. The people who are really rich don't care either. Their houses are more than the minimum setback apart and they can afford fences if they don't wanna look at something and they can afford big garages and barns to work in so as not to annoy their neighbors to the point of building fences. Caring about what your neighbors do is solidly the purview of upper middle class busybodies.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    I live in a neighborhood and one guy has 6 cars in different states of repair and a boat on his property. Nice guy but I feel for his neighbors. Trailers and fish houses are not uncommon either but not permanent. We have ordinances against it but they aren't really enforced. We went from $200k houses to $400k houses so I expect things to change. I want the sidewalks fixed etc.. I want nice property values. 95% of the neighbors keep things nice.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      Why do cars on his property bother you?
      - sjg007 6y ago
        6 of them, in violation of city ordinances. Two on the grass. We all agreed to the rules.
thaumaturgy 6y ago
Oh, this again. This law was written to give code enforcement a cudgel against unlicensed repair shops. All the auto enthusiast blogs and forums immediately lost their minds, but there hasn't been a sweep of the neighborhoods with officers asking to look inside of your garage for uncommon tools. The one complaint I could find online [1] was from a dude whose handle was "nimblemotorsports" and he said he had a car lift on his property (but it hadn't been set up yet). [2] There's plenty of room for grousing about poorly written laws, but this law has lots of other equally poorly written laws across the country to keep it company. Sacramento county isn't forbidding you from putting shiny new headers on your hot rod in your own garage. [1]: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-illegal-do-major-repairs-your-car-your-garage-s/155378/page1/ https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-illegal-do-ma... [2]: It took only a little more effort using the nimblemotorsports name to get an idea of why his neighbors might completely reasonably be getting irritated enough to call code enforcement.
- watwut 6y ago
  I dont think this is as strong defense of that law as you think. It still makes fixing car or geeking on car punisheable. It still is absurd limitation of what I would expect to be a freedom.
- OldManAndTheCpp 6y ago
  Making laws that target personal liberties in the hopes that they will be selectively applied does not increase justice.
- ziftface 6y ago
  I'm sorry but this is difficult to believe. The site says that it's unlawful to do "minor vehicle repair [...] Using tools not normally found in a residence". If it was just a zoning law, why does it have to include that stipulation? I've seen plenty of people who own tools "not normally found in a residence". It's hard to guess exactly what the authors' intentions were, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to conclude that there were other motives besides just cracking down on illegal auto shops.
  - 6y ago
toolz 6y ago
Why does it seem like people feel the need to make anything they can about race? (Maybe I'm just overly sensitive and it doesn't happen as much as I perceive, to be fair) I don't agree with the law, but literally every race owns vehicles. Why complicate the issue with racism if there doesn't need to be any complication? Seems like a clear cut issue that people can unite over that instead is being made into a minority only issue for no reason.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >but literally every race owns vehicles. Well, this isn't about owing vehicles though, but about a particular style of vehicles, with work done of them, and specific gatherings to showcase them etc. Might as well ask "Why make the taco-fest about race, everybody eats". Sure, but those against the taco-fest in some place where predominantly latinos frequent it, more probably than not have racial issues against them gathering near them, and are not just against tacos in general... I mean the parent comment spells it out "given the relatively high number of hispanics and black who work on their cars", and I think they are right. Those same residents wouldn't have an issue with a mostly-white gathering of rich classic car owners...
- 542458 6y ago
  Because race is deeply entwined with culture, and culture is in everything. Every culture owns cars, but not every subculture does things with cars that require you to do most of the work yourself in your driveway. It’s like Ehrlichman’s famous quote: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.“
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    kind of a tricky topic. a lot of modifications people make to their vehicles are not legal to begin with (emissions, noise, "stancing"), and a lot of that is for legitimate safety reasons. especially with tunes, people know this and flash their ECU back to stock before going in for state emissions tests. but anyways, there is a subset of white people that also enjoy modding their cars or simply doing the routine maintenance themselves. there is certainly a stereotype about a certain kind of white person that has multiple non-functional cars rusting away on their front lawn. all of this is not to say that that particular law at that particular place and time wasn't racially motivated.
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yardie 6y ago
> residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. When I see ordinances like this I see a 1A violation waiting to happen. I assume the council has worded it in a way that doesn't draw scrutiny or the affected don't have the resources to have it taken to court. One of the places I lived added an ordinance banning work trucks. My neighbor works out of his truck and would get fined and towed continuously. He threatened to sue and I think the compromise they reached was he had to remove the company vinyl signs. I believe he changed it to magnet stickers that he installs and removes daily. And it was basically the same thing; working class apartments slowly gentrified and all sorts of new rules were put in place.
asiachick 6y ago
I don't know Sac's demographics for people who work on cars but I've never associated being a car nerd (someone who works on their car(s)) as a more hispanic/black thing. In fact my stereotype is the "white trash" (used as a shortcut for the description, not a judgement) cars parked on the lawn. My brother-in-law, in LA, white, has had 10 cars on their property, all beaters, he works on all of them. Are you sure home car maintenance isn't more associated with poverty than race?

quantified 6y ago

Sounds like a place in need of “right to repair”

mips_avatar 6y ago

Wow one of my life goals is to have a house with a proper workshop. Guess that won’t happen in Sacramento.

jimbob45 6y ago

https://code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Programs/Pages/AutoRepair.aspx https://code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Programs/Pages/AutoRe... These rules are draconian. "[Prohibited if conducted] outside a fully enclosed garage or accessory structure and resulting in the vehicle being inoperable for a period in excess of 24 hours." On the other hand, if you're rich enough to live there, you're probably rich enough to have a large enough enclosure where you can skirt the law anyway.

sokoloff 6y ago
It's even worse than that. Major repairs are prohibited even in a fully enclosed garage. Minor repairs are prohibited in a great many cases as well. If I use a torque wrench to reinstall my wheels (even in a garage), I'm in violation. If I change the brakes on a friend's or girlfriend's car (even in a garage), I'm in violation. If I plug a flat tire for a neighbor or a passing motorist in my garage, I'm in violation. If I start a brake change in the driveway on Sunday morning and need a part from the parts store that I get and install on Monday, I'm in violation. I've certainly done all of those things and am not seen as a "bad neighbor".
- wrycoder 6y ago
  LOL. I remember a curbside valve job I did fifty years ago after I blew a head gasket. I think I had the hood up a total of four hours - two hours remove, two hours replace. Chevy V-8s are easy and there were no emission controls in those days to clutter things up. No one said a word.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Seriously, how does any and all of this(along with the whole idea of HOAs) mesh at all with the "land of the free" idea that Americans are constantly broadcasting to the world. It's meant to be the most "free" country in the world and yet so many people are happy to live in communities that restrict them severely in what they can do with their own property. How is the response to any of this anything other than "mind your own damn business?"
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    keep in mind we are talking about a city in california. the "mind your own damn business" crowd has mostly self-sorted elsewhere.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The freedom isn't evenly distributed.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    HOAs are at least voluntary and hyper-local associations. I hope to never live in housing covered by an HOA (and I can avoid it), but I support other people who willingly or actively prefer to live under those arrangements. Restrictions that an HOA might adopt can be more carefully tailored to the residents there than a city-wide ban on using tools not commonly found in a residence on a car. (Imagine if this law applied to electronics repair. "Sorry, most people don’t have a Pentalobe screwdriver, so no Apple portable repairs for you; take it to a shop like a good little consumer!")
- SilasX 6y ago
  Stupid question and probably tangential at this point, but: Torque wrenches aren't commonly found in people's homes?

billylindeman 6y ago

what the actual fuck. as someone who grew up in metro detroit this disgusts me.

flatline 6y ago

Do white people not work on their cars? The most obnoxious (and awesome) cars I’ve lived next to were owned by white people. There is definitely a latino car culture where I live but I’ve been other places where it’s all old white dudes. Seriously wtf Sacramento?

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Do white people not work on their cars? Rich (mostly) white people who want these kinds of laws and draft them on behalf of their constituents don't. This is basically a blue collar vs white collar thing. The people who are really rich don't care either. Their houses are more than the minimum setback apart and they can afford fences if they don't wanna look at something and they can afford big garages and barns to work in so as not to annoy their neighbors to the point of building fences. Caring about what your neighbors do is solidly the purview of upper middle class busybodies.
- sjg007 6y ago
  I live in a neighborhood and one guy has 6 cars in different states of repair and a boat on his property. Nice guy but I feel for his neighbors. Trailers and fish houses are not uncommon either but not permanent. We have ordinances against it but they aren't really enforced. We went from $200k houses to $400k houses so I expect things to change. I want the sidewalks fixed etc.. I want nice property values. 95% of the neighbors keep things nice.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Why do cars on his property bother you?
    - sjg007 6y ago
      6 of them, in violation of city ordinances. Two on the grass. We all agreed to the rules.

thaumaturgy 6y ago

Oh, this again. This law was written to give code enforcement a cudgel against unlicensed repair shops. All the auto enthusiast blogs and forums immediately lost their minds, but there hasn't been a sweep of the neighborhoods with officers asking to look inside of your garage for uncommon tools. The one complaint I could find online [1] was from a dude whose handle was "nimblemotorsports" and he said he had a car lift on his property (but it hadn't been set up yet). [2] There's plenty of room for grousing about poorly written laws, but this law has lots of other equally poorly written laws across the country to keep it company. Sacramento county isn't forbidding you from putting shiny new headers on your hot rod in your own garage. [1]: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-illegal-do-major-repairs-your-car-your-garage-s/155378/page1/ https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-illegal-do-ma... [2]: It took only a little more effort using the nimblemotorsports name to get an idea of why his neighbors might completely reasonably be getting irritated enough to call code enforcement.

watwut 6y ago
I dont think this is as strong defense of that law as you think. It still makes fixing car or geeking on car punisheable. It still is absurd limitation of what I would expect to be a freedom.
OldManAndTheCpp 6y ago
Making laws that target personal liberties in the hopes that they will be selectively applied does not increase justice.
ziftface 6y ago
I'm sorry but this is difficult to believe. The site says that it's unlawful to do "minor vehicle repair [...] Using tools not normally found in a residence". If it was just a zoning law, why does it have to include that stipulation? I've seen plenty of people who own tools "not normally found in a residence". It's hard to guess exactly what the authors' intentions were, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to conclude that there were other motives besides just cracking down on illegal auto shops.
- 6y ago

toolz 6y ago

Why does it seem like people feel the need to make anything they can about race? (Maybe I'm just overly sensitive and it doesn't happen as much as I perceive, to be fair) I don't agree with the law, but literally every race owns vehicles. Why complicate the issue with racism if there doesn't need to be any complication? Seems like a clear cut issue that people can unite over that instead is being made into a minority only issue for no reason.

coldtea 6y ago
>but literally every race owns vehicles. Well, this isn't about owing vehicles though, but about a particular style of vehicles, with work done of them, and specific gatherings to showcase them etc. Might as well ask "Why make the taco-fest about race, everybody eats". Sure, but those against the taco-fest in some place where predominantly latinos frequent it, more probably than not have racial issues against them gathering near them, and are not just against tacos in general... I mean the parent comment spells it out "given the relatively high number of hispanics and black who work on their cars", and I think they are right. Those same residents wouldn't have an issue with a mostly-white gathering of rich classic car owners...
542458 6y ago
Because race is deeply entwined with culture, and culture is in everything. Every culture owns cars, but not every subculture does things with cars that require you to do most of the work yourself in your driveway. It’s like Ehrlichman’s famous quote: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.“
- leetcrew 6y ago
  kind of a tricky topic. a lot of modifications people make to their vehicles are not legal to begin with (emissions, noise, "stancing"), and a lot of that is for legitimate safety reasons. especially with tunes, people know this and flash their ECU back to stock before going in for state emissions tests. but anyways, there is a subset of white people that also enjoy modding their cars or simply doing the routine maintenance themselves. there is certainly a stereotype about a certain kind of white person that has multiple non-functional cars rusting away on their front lawn. all of this is not to say that that particular law at that particular place and time wasn't racially motivated.

deleted 6y ago

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deleted 6y ago

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yardie 6y ago

> residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. When I see ordinances like this I see a 1A violation waiting to happen. I assume the council has worded it in a way that doesn't draw scrutiny or the affected don't have the resources to have it taken to court. One of the places I lived added an ordinance banning work trucks. My neighbor works out of his truck and would get fined and towed continuously. He threatened to sue and I think the compromise they reached was he had to remove the company vinyl signs. I believe he changed it to magnet stickers that he installs and removes daily. And it was basically the same thing; working class apartments slowly gentrified and all sorts of new rules were put in place.

asiachick 6y ago

I don't know Sac's demographics for people who work on cars but I've never associated being a car nerd (someone who works on their car(s)) as a more hispanic/black thing. In fact my stereotype is the "white trash" (used as a shortcut for the description, not a judgement) cars parked on the lawn. My brother-in-law, in LA, white, has had 10 cars on their property, all beaters, he works on all of them. Are you sure home car maintenance isn't more associated with poverty than race?