City Of Huntsville Sues Military Veteran For Living ‘Off-Grid’ Lifestyle On His Own Land

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27-year-old Tyler Truitt, a military veteran, is being taken to court by the City of Huntsville, Alabama, for his ‘off-the-grid’ lifestyle on his own property. Truitt and his girlfriend, Soraya Hamar, live on their two acre land within city limits and use solar panels for heat and electricity, rainwater for drinking and bathing and composting for sewage. That’s the bone of contention. Officials have warned him that if he doesn’t vacate the premises, and if he doesn’t get hooked up to city water and power, he could be arrested.

“They came and they condemned our house and told us if we stayed here we’d be arrested for trespassing on our own property, and the reason why is, they said, it was unsafe living conditions because we don’t have city utilities hooked up. I took an oath that I would support and defend the Constitution and the freedoms that entails, and I really feel like those are being trampled upon,” Truitt told WAFF-TV.

However, the City of Huntsville is suing Truitt saying that he needs to follow city ordinances or leave. “Apparently he has chosen to live an alternative lifestyle and that’s great, people can choose to live different ways but if you live in the city of Huntsville you do have to abide by our laws and ordinance. I’m sure there are other areas and properties in the country that if you wanted to choose a different lifestyle you could do so,” said Kelly Schrimsher, Communications Director for the Huntsville Mayor’s Office.

She said those laws and ordinances state that say you cannot live in a trailer that’s not in a designated trailer park. “It’s about the health and public safety of our citizens, so you must have a sanitary sewer, you must have potable running water. There are certain requirements that are there to protect our citizens through the winter,” she noted.

The city asserts Truitt’s property must be connected to the city’s treatment facility for the safety of Truitt and his neighbors. “It’s there for property protection. Adjoining property owners like protection and some homeowners might consider a trailer a nuisance,” added Jim McGuffey, Director of Planning.

The City has filed a lawsuit against Truitt and Hamar, calling their self-sufficient lifestyle ‘unsafe.’ Truitt’s next court date is set for July 29th of this year.

Truitt and Hamar intend to fight the condemnation of their property and are willing to face arrest if authorities attempt to force them off of their land. “You have to stand up for what you believe in. They could come out here today if they wanted to and take us to jail for trespassing if that’s what they want to call it and, you know, that’d be fine with me. I’ll still come back the next day and the next day and the next day because it’s my home and because I live here. Where else am I supposed to go really?” said Truitt.

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35 COMMENTS

    • If they keep pushing him the might end up with some type of Rambo-style incident on their hands. Never realized Alabama was such a “nanny state”.

      • Well. Just about all the US states, have some sort of law, that protects the citizens from being able to live like they want. Land of the Free…? Yeah well, if you tell a lie enough times, it becomes the truth, for some people.

    • Yep, leave them alone to continue to shit and piss in the cities groundwater supply, contaminating the water for all citizens… not!

      This is what the whole thing is about: They don’t have a safe way to dispose of sewage, in other words, excrement. They are using the compost, which means it is open and will be washed into the groundwater. They need to have either a safe septic tank, or hook up to the cities sewer system. Otherwise they are contaminating the groundwater in a way that used to cause deadly diseases in the past. Hint: There is a reason child mortality has dropped to almost 0 in developed countries, and that reason has a name: Sewers.

      • Composting toilets don’t leave the compost in contact with the ground, and if done right can destroy human pathogens, usually by composting at high temperatures (>120 degrees F) for extended periods of time. Stop being a knee-jerk reactionary and learn something new. Also, antibiotics and vaccines were just as important as sewers in reducing mortality.

      • You are a complete dumb ass. The ground is a natural filter. As the urine seeps through it, it gets filtered. And as for excrement, a little fluid might seep into the ground to get filtered, the rest dries up so much that it will just blow away. Besides, what do you think water treatment plants are for? They treat the water that comes out of the ground several different ways before it even reaches your home. It doesn’t just come straight out of the ground and into your home. And even if it does, safe home filtering systems are available for water wells. You people need to come to the country and learn a little instead of thinking that you can just read a book and think you know everything.

      • Like the septic tank is a miracle box that stuff just disappears in? Explain the septic drain field to me then, please.

    • I thinks Trumps means with stupid laws are taxes for rich people. Never trusts a super rich people they only want more money and doesn’t care about poor people.
      The richest one percent of the world soon owns half of the world’s richest and guess where Trump’s fortune are.

  1. just get utilities hooked up so to satisfy them. just cause they are hooked up and doesn’t mean they have to use them. it would be a compromise.

    • If they can afford to get them installed. Maybe there so far out there is no hook-up’s. Then they would have to pay for for it to be up and running even if they don’t use it. I have a gas meter which the only thing in my home that uses gas is the wall heater. Never use it. But I’m forced to pay a meter charge every month. It’s turned off at the meter so no gas is ever reaching my house. Yet I have to pay.

  2. Freedom is a lie. Slavery was never abolished, only dressed up to make it invisible. We should push for the right to live free in our so called “free” countries. This man better get off scott free and apologised to because they’re literally depriving him of his liberty. Many years ago we could set up our homes of the sweat of our own brows and live our lives how we wanted, now we must live slave to the system or they lock us away.

    If we don’t stop this kind of thing early, it’ll get worse and before we know it we’ll be accepting slavery without realizing it.

  3. It isn’t about safety or health. It is about property values, tax revenues, water bill revenues and utility companies lobbying cities to keep solar out of the community so their revenues dot decline. All about money, not safety.

    • But it is about safety.
      Before modern sewer systems, cities suffered cholera epidemics almost every year, killing children and the elderly at a horrifying rate. The reason: Human excrement contaminating the drinking water.
      This couple is disposing of their excrement in the unsafest way possible, by putting it on the compost, which means it is out in the open to be washed into the groundwater with the next rain.

      • How is taking a dump in the woods going to contaminate ground water? I could start doing this for the hell of it for the rest of my life, nobody would know, child mortality wouldn’t change… Nobody gives a fuck about your safety. There is this thing called ‘natural selection’ that handles those matters for us.

      • We put pig shit on our fields. Agricultural runoff is everywhere. Ground water goes through a processing center anyways. Composting is actually a very good way to eliminate waste, as human excrement is organic in nature and that is the only requirement for something to be composted. Also have you never heard of outhouses?
        They are not leaving their shit in the streets. Compost dumps are lined with heavy plastic. If they went so far as to get solar panels, I’m pretty sure they would follow protocol with the compost dump.

  4. This is starting to happen across the country. They do not want you to be self efficient They want you to have to depend on them, to many people are a sleep to want is happening or simply don’t want to believe until it happens to them, to many are brainwashed by tv, sports, iphones, same-sex marriage, to realize we have lost our government our constitution our rights!

  5. i say rise up, take up arms and rebel against the corporate overlords, the united states constitution has a clause about overthrowing the government when it becomes oppressive. time to refresh the tree of liberty. death to all tyrants!

  6. Is the city going to pay for all those forced upgrades? His branch of service needs to step in, it is the least they can do.

  7. Mr Biden Sir
    This is wrong and you know it. People need to start to go Green if were going to have any future for our children and their children. This is to generate revenue for this city and that’s all its about. They don’t care about the safety of their citizens. It’s all about the Benjamin’s.

  8. Just remember when they send the cops to arrest you it won’t be Andy Griffith showing up it’ll be cops in black and they will kill you and your girlfriend. No honor in them.

  9. So does the city of Huntsville provide free running water and electricity to the disadvantaged who can not afford utilities or who can not access utilities? If not they are failing in their responsibilities to their citizens under the law?

  10. What makes me angry is that he *tried* to comply with their requests to be hooked up to city utilities, but they wouldn’t do it because he didn’t have a ‘building permit’. He went to get a permit and was denied because he lives in a ‘trailer’.

    There’s no winning with these people.

    He’s right. They’re trying to keep a ‘certain type’ out of Huntsville.

    And to imagine. Hubs and I were thinking about retiring there.

    Not any more.

  11. He doesn’t need to be surrounded by these morons. Sell your property, and move out here to Wyoming where nobody says where you can or can’t have a total off-grid lifestyle.

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