South Acres/Crestmont neighbors may lose 5 feet of their backyards to subdivision's developers
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A neighborhood in Houston's south side may be getting smaller so that a new neighborhood can get bigger.
Residents on Fairgreen Lane in the South Acres/Crestmont Park area got letters in the mail saying their fences were on the developer's property, so the company would need to take down the homeowners' fences and build new ones closer to residents' back doors at no expense.
"I refuse to let it happen," homeowner Elizabeth Brannon, who has owned her home for 45 years, said.
There was no fence when Brannon said she purchased the property. She added that a surveyor came out and determined where her fence could and couldn't go.
"They surveyed the land and we went about putting up our fence," Brannon said.
So when she got a letter from the developer saying her fence was in the wrong spot, and developers building a subdivision on the vacant land behind her would be reclaiming upwards of five feet of her back yard, she felt it couldn't be right.
"My husband and I worked for this. We earned this, to just let someone come in and let them take it away from us?" Brannon said.
Curtis Harris, who lived in his home for two decades, also got a letter. His mother-in-law lived there before him.
"That's a lot of my land," Harris said.
If the developers want to tear down his fence and put up a new one, he says that's fine. But tearing down a fence and taking away the yardage, he adds, would also be taking away memories.
"We'll get down to the brass tacks of it and figure out what's going on," Harris said.
ABC13 spoke to the developers, Sandrock Gardens LLC, who are willing to meet with homeowners to go over the survey. They even offered to send the survey to ABC13, but that hasn't arrived yet, as of Friday afternoon.
The developers claim they are changing the neighborhood for the better, and while they aim to be good neighbors, they said they have a right to reclaim the land.
Brannon, who said she doesn't plan to let go that easy, will have a new survey done at her expense.
"You have plenty of land! Why take mine? Why take pieces of mine?" Brannon said.
She also told ABC13 that the developers back tracked and told her they would not take her land after reaching out to us, but Sandrock Gardens said it never said that.
For their part, the developers said they're happy to visit the land and double-check the survey but plan to move forward if the survey shows anyone's fence is past the property line.
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