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At my last apartment, we got a new neighbor who ran a food truck and dumped the food truck's trash in our apartment's trash bins. This obviously introduced man

At my last apartment, we got a new neighbor who ran a food truck and dumped the food truck's trash in our apartment's trash bins. This obviously introduced many issues. The (~6 very large) bins were always full by 3 days after pickup and then overfilled all over the back of the complex for the rest of the week. Rodent and especially ant/fruit fly issues exploded. The smell was atrocious. The bins were directly behind our kitchen door, and we didn't have AC, so our kitchen door had to stay closed. The kitchen door was key to the airflow that would naturally cool the apartment, so the entire apartment was miserable. Worst of all, the neighbor did not take any of the bins to the curb each week, was unresponsive, and our landlord was predictably unhelpful. For many weeks I patched the issue by hauling this guy's business trash to the curb every single morning (which is a lot more work, and much more unpleasant, than it perhaps sounds like). Before that experience, I would probably see rules like "food trucks must file a form proving they have a legal place to dump their refuse" and consider it to be absurd red tape.

wffurr 4y ago
Well past time to go to the city inspector. Or refuse to haul the trash entirely.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  > Well past time to go to the city inspector. "Our neighbors have a lot of trash" is not a complaint that a city inspector is going to take seriously, and in any case our city was very landlord-friendly/human-hostile. In most cities waiting for the leas to be up and then moving out is always easier... We resolved this by threatening the neighbor to go to the office that permitted his food truck. If food truck regulations didn't exist, we would have been SOL until the lease was up. > Or refuse to haul the trash entirely. This was an impractical option. On an 85 degree day, our apartment would stay below 75 (and below 70 until late afternoon close to the end of the workday) if we kept the large front windows open, the kitchen door open, and some well-placed fans. It would heat up to 85 very quickly if you closed off the airflow. Working in 85 degree heat is highly unpleasant. To say nothing of the rats and fruit flies/ants, which were impossible to keep out of the apartment even when we kept the doors and windows closed.
  - balfirevic 4y ago
    > Our neighbors have a lot of trash" is not a complaint that a city inspector is going to take seriously Well, that's the root of the issue.
    - InefficientRed 4y ago
      Sure, but in our case, it was helpful to be able to appeal to (apparently now controversial?) food truck regulations rather than reform a bureaucracy that the entire rich & connected rentier class would likely fight tooth and nail to keep unreformed.
      - t0suj4 4y ago
        There should be a mechanism to effectively resolve this type of conflicts. Regulations are usually too heavy handed or toothless.
        InefficientRed 4y ago
        There is a way to resolve things without the heavy hand of law enforcement/courts/the state, but it requires those options as a backdrop: 1. You have a conversation and politely ask as a neighbor. Maybe mention it a couple times to make sure the point gets across. 2. If that doesn't work, you research the regulation and have a second conversation explaining the issue in legal terms instead of neighborly terms. 3. If that doesn't work, you have a conversation and leave a note explaining that you don't want to cause trouble but that you will report to the city. 4. If that doesn't work, you -- at last -- get the city involved. Without regulation, step 3 has no teeth. And you only get to step 3 if steps 1-2 fail, so the premise here is that simply asking isn't going to help anyways. Most legal disputes can be handled amicably without getting the state or courts involved when it's clear who is in the right. But the law has to exist first, or else the abusive/negligent party will just continue to ignore the situation.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      Exactly. City DGAF when some rando being sloppy with his trash. But when it's a business they're happy to enforce because enforcement leads to fines.
gloriana 4y ago
Nice story. Laws and regulations are broken all the time, but only used/prosecuted very rarely when the circumstances are egregious and the parties are pissed. E.g. violent criminals in jail have committed 10-30x more violent crimes than the single one they have been convicted for. Similarly most minor infractions go completely unnoticed and unreported because no one cares. The laws are are there to make things prosecutable and punishable. But they are not there. You can operate many businesses completely outside the law without running into any problems as long as you are courteous, unnoticed, and do no harm. You respect the laws in spirit, but not in practice. E.g. you don't do all the paper work, but you also are a good citizen and respect the rules in spirit if not in practice.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  Yeah. One of our other neighbors ran a tutoring side business out of her apartment, which was technically illegal but of course didn't bother anyone and went unnoticed.
  - _fat_santa 4y ago
    Often times you see rules that are broad, but really intended for a specific thing. Like the example you gave, making it illegal to run a business from a private residence. That rule was never intended for the tutor, it was intended for the noisy neighbor running a mechanic shop out of their garage.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >You can operate many businesses completely outside the law without running into any problems as long as you are courteous, unnoticed, and do no harm. The problem with this is that if you're doing it enough to make a living off of (i.e. not a side gig) it makes you a massive target for enforcers looking to issue fines. And there's always the Karen who'd rather narc on you than politely ask you not to do something that you didn't even know was pissing them off.
  - toyg 4y ago
pontifier 4y ago
Sounds like your neighbor did have a legal place to dump refuse so adding that rule wouldn't have helped, and then everyone in Boston would have a 93rd step in the process. I've spent 2 years trying to get permission to have electricians put wire back into conduit that is already there in a building I own. Saturday thieves broke into my outdoor containers (because I can't get an occupancy permit) and stole over $20,000 worth of stuff. I can't install security lighting and security systems without power to run them! This stuff is really getting to me and I feel like I'm in an Ayn Rand book.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  > Sounds like your neighbor did have a legal place to dump refuse Well, no. After he stopped using our residential bins, he started dumping in city trash cans, was fined, and then ultimately paid for use of a dumpster. > so adding that rule wouldn't have helped He wasn't aware that either of his illegal dumping methods were illegal, and changed his behavior when he was informed (in the second case by a fine). So a form probably would have, in fact, prevented the situation from happening. > and then everyone in Boston would have a 93rd step in the process. I probably spent 40 hours on this issue. Much of that time highly unpleasant (cleaning out rodent traps, taking out cheap trash bags that would break and make a mess, spraying down gross trash bins and the back sidewalk, etc) A one page online form that takes 5 minutes to fill out, for every food truck in the city, consumes perhaps 20 hours of time on the high end. So this one event I experienced already pays a net 20 hour profit to society. I'm not the only one who has had issues with food truck trash disposal -- it's actually a fairly common issue for cities and one of the primary sources of complaints my city received about food trucks. A quick google search shows that other cities have similar issues and some even ban food trucks because of trash issues. I'm sorry about your building code issues, that sounds very annoying and unfair, but only Ayn Rand could complain about filling out forms when a business is literally trashing someone's home ;-)
  - pontifier 4y ago
    Maybe the difficulty and red tape involved with starting businesses results directly in having to cut corners in other areas. People only have so much bandwidth, and forcing someone to do a bunch of pointless stuff doesn't do anyone any good. Maybe your city should just make sure there are enough sanitation resources that the ones you are complaining about aren't overloaded.
blobbers 4y ago
The thing is, red tape shouldn’t be there to enforce compliance. He could have done that even if he’d paid the fees, which maybe he did? Seems like a separate issue of your neighbor not being very considerate and dumping (illegally?).
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  > Seems like a separate issue of your neighbor not being very considerate and dumping (illegally?). Refuse externalities are a systemic issue for food trucks. They were the #1 reason for complaints about food trucks in my city. There are news articles about beach towns banning food trucks and an article about Portland considering a ban in certain areas because of trash issues. This case was egregious but the problem is not uncommon. > The thing is, red tape shouldn’t be there to enforce compliance. He could have done that even if he’d paid the fees, which maybe he did? He went on to dump in city trash cans (illegally), was fined, then arranged for a dumpster. He claims, and I believe this is true, that he didn't know either residential or city trash was off-limits. (I believe it is true because getting away with illegal dumping when done intentionally is super easy... you only get caught when you do it in broad daylight in front of a cop because you don't know it's not allowed.) Given that issues with trash from food trucks are predictable and known, simply asking for proof that the food truck owner has access to a dumpster or other waste management option seems pretty reasonable. If the food truck owner has a proper waste management plan then describing it should take a few minutes max ("I am paying XYZ to use the dumpster located behind 123 Main St."). If they don't have a plan then this is a net positive for them because they'd almost certainly otherwise end up with either fines or a revoked license. Even assuming a 1/200 success rate at reducing illegal dumping, requiring a waste management plan would cost 20 hours (amortized over hundreds of people) and save 40 hours (amortized over 1 person). The actual savings are probably much higher because 1/200 is unrealistically low -- I'm willing to bet most illegal dumping of food truck waste is not intentionally illegal. Why is it incumbent on the rest of society to subsidize food truck owners at the tune of 2x time?
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > red tape shouldn’t be there to enforce compliance Thats like.. The only purpose of red tape?

wffurr 4y ago

Well past time to go to the city inspector. Or refuse to haul the trash entirely.

InefficientRed 4y ago
> Well past time to go to the city inspector. "Our neighbors have a lot of trash" is not a complaint that a city inspector is going to take seriously, and in any case our city was very landlord-friendly/human-hostile. In most cities waiting for the leas to be up and then moving out is always easier... We resolved this by threatening the neighbor to go to the office that permitted his food truck. If food truck regulations didn't exist, we would have been SOL until the lease was up. > Or refuse to haul the trash entirely. This was an impractical option. On an 85 degree day, our apartment would stay below 75 (and below 70 until late afternoon close to the end of the workday) if we kept the large front windows open, the kitchen door open, and some well-placed fans. It would heat up to 85 very quickly if you closed off the airflow. Working in 85 degree heat is highly unpleasant. To say nothing of the rats and fruit flies/ants, which were impossible to keep out of the apartment even when we kept the doors and windows closed.
- balfirevic 4y ago
  > Our neighbors have a lot of trash" is not a complaint that a city inspector is going to take seriously Well, that's the root of the issue.
  - InefficientRed 4y ago
    Sure, but in our case, it was helpful to be able to appeal to (apparently now controversial?) food truck regulations rather than reform a bureaucracy that the entire rich & connected rentier class would likely fight tooth and nail to keep unreformed.
    - t0suj4 4y ago
      There should be a mechanism to effectively resolve this type of conflicts. Regulations are usually too heavy handed or toothless.
      - InefficientRed 4y ago
        There is a way to resolve things without the heavy hand of law enforcement/courts/the state, but it requires those options as a backdrop: 1. You have a conversation and politely ask as a neighbor. Maybe mention it a couple times to make sure the point gets across. 2. If that doesn't work, you research the regulation and have a second conversation explaining the issue in legal terms instead of neighborly terms. 3. If that doesn't work, you have a conversation and leave a note explaining that you don't want to cause trouble but that you will report to the city. 4. If that doesn't work, you -- at last -- get the city involved. Without regulation, step 3 has no teeth. And you only get to step 3 if steps 1-2 fail, so the premise here is that simply asking isn't going to help anyways. Most legal disputes can be handled amicably without getting the state or courts involved when it's clear who is in the right. But the law has to exist first, or else the abusive/negligent party will just continue to ignore the situation.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    Exactly. City DGAF when some rando being sloppy with his trash. But when it's a business they're happy to enforce because enforcement leads to fines.

gloriana 4y ago

Nice story. Laws and regulations are broken all the time, but only used/prosecuted very rarely when the circumstances are egregious and the parties are pissed. E.g. violent criminals in jail have committed 10-30x more violent crimes than the single one they have been convicted for. Similarly most minor infractions go completely unnoticed and unreported because no one cares. The laws are are there to make things prosecutable and punishable. But they are not there. You can operate many businesses completely outside the law without running into any problems as long as you are courteous, unnoticed, and do no harm. You respect the laws in spirit, but not in practice. E.g. you don't do all the paper work, but you also are a good citizen and respect the rules in spirit if not in practice.

InefficientRed 4y ago
Yeah. One of our other neighbors ran a tutoring side business out of her apartment, which was technically illegal but of course didn't bother anyone and went unnoticed.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  Often times you see rules that are broad, but really intended for a specific thing. Like the example you gave, making it illegal to run a business from a private residence. That rule was never intended for the tutor, it was intended for the noisy neighbor running a mechanic shop out of their garage.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>You can operate many businesses completely outside the law without running into any problems as long as you are courteous, unnoticed, and do no harm. The problem with this is that if you're doing it enough to make a living off of (i.e. not a side gig) it makes you a massive target for enforcers looking to issue fines. And there's always the Karen who'd rather narc on you than politely ask you not to do something that you didn't even know was pissing them off.
- toyg 4y ago

pontifier 4y ago

Sounds like your neighbor did have a legal place to dump refuse so adding that rule wouldn't have helped, and then everyone in Boston would have a 93rd step in the process. I've spent 2 years trying to get permission to have electricians put wire back into conduit that is already there in a building I own. Saturday thieves broke into my outdoor containers (because I can't get an occupancy permit) and stole over $20,000 worth of stuff. I can't install security lighting and security systems without power to run them! This stuff is really getting to me and I feel like I'm in an Ayn Rand book.

InefficientRed 4y ago
> Sounds like your neighbor did have a legal place to dump refuse Well, no. After he stopped using our residential bins, he started dumping in city trash cans, was fined, and then ultimately paid for use of a dumpster. > so adding that rule wouldn't have helped He wasn't aware that either of his illegal dumping methods were illegal, and changed his behavior when he was informed (in the second case by a fine). So a form probably would have, in fact, prevented the situation from happening. > and then everyone in Boston would have a 93rd step in the process. I probably spent 40 hours on this issue. Much of that time highly unpleasant (cleaning out rodent traps, taking out cheap trash bags that would break and make a mess, spraying down gross trash bins and the back sidewalk, etc) A one page online form that takes 5 minutes to fill out, for every food truck in the city, consumes perhaps 20 hours of time on the high end. So this one event I experienced already pays a net 20 hour profit to society. I'm not the only one who has had issues with food truck trash disposal -- it's actually a fairly common issue for cities and one of the primary sources of complaints my city received about food trucks. A quick google search shows that other cities have similar issues and some even ban food trucks because of trash issues. I'm sorry about your building code issues, that sounds very annoying and unfair, but only Ayn Rand could complain about filling out forms when a business is literally trashing someone's home ;-)
- pontifier 4y ago
  Maybe the difficulty and red tape involved with starting businesses results directly in having to cut corners in other areas. People only have so much bandwidth, and forcing someone to do a bunch of pointless stuff doesn't do anyone any good. Maybe your city should just make sure there are enough sanitation resources that the ones you are complaining about aren't overloaded.

blobbers 4y ago

The thing is, red tape shouldn’t be there to enforce compliance. He could have done that even if he’d paid the fees, which maybe he did? Seems like a separate issue of your neighbor not being very considerate and dumping (illegally?).

InefficientRed 4y ago
> Seems like a separate issue of your neighbor not being very considerate and dumping (illegally?). Refuse externalities are a systemic issue for food trucks. They were the #1 reason for complaints about food trucks in my city. There are news articles about beach towns banning food trucks and an article about Portland considering a ban in certain areas because of trash issues. This case was egregious but the problem is not uncommon. > The thing is, red tape shouldn’t be there to enforce compliance. He could have done that even if he’d paid the fees, which maybe he did? He went on to dump in city trash cans (illegally), was fined, then arranged for a dumpster. He claims, and I believe this is true, that he didn't know either residential or city trash was off-limits. (I believe it is true because getting away with illegal dumping when done intentionally is super easy... you only get caught when you do it in broad daylight in front of a cop because you don't know it's not allowed.) Given that issues with trash from food trucks are predictable and known, simply asking for proof that the food truck owner has access to a dumpster or other waste management option seems pretty reasonable. If the food truck owner has a proper waste management plan then describing it should take a few minutes max ("I am paying XYZ to use the dumpster located behind 123 Main St."). If they don't have a plan then this is a net positive for them because they'd almost certainly otherwise end up with either fines or a revoked license. Even assuming a 1/200 success rate at reducing illegal dumping, requiring a waste management plan would cost 20 hours (amortized over hundreds of people) and save 40 hours (amortized over 1 person). The actual savings are probably much higher because 1/200 is unrealistically low -- I'm willing to bet most illegal dumping of food truck waste is not intentionally illegal. Why is it incumbent on the rest of society to subsidize food truck owners at the tune of 2x time?
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> red tape shouldn’t be there to enforce compliance Thats like.. The only purpose of red tape?