They look like trailer trash too. And damn fine Americans!
There is much more to this story than this simple article tells. Lyle Barkley's homes were in place before the township had zoning laws that prohibited them and before there were any neighbors.
If he hadn't lied on the building permit application, none of this would have happened.
He applied for a permit to add additions to the homes. He was granted these permits with no explanation of what is and is not allowed. (BTW manufactured additions are allowed under the code) After placing the additional mobile homes on the site and starting to connect them, his permits were revoked. No explanation or reason just revoked. Barkley went to the city wanting to know how he could bring his homes up to code. They would not negotiate or even talk to him. They just told him the additions would have to be removed or he would be fined.
Later Township attorney James Murray said, "No township or city in the state would allow the sandwiching of a manufactured house on an already nonconforming structure under zoning." Meaning that it was not the additions that were objected to, but the original "nonconforming structures" which had been grandfathered in. And in court by their own admission they had no objections to the additions, just his existing homes that they said were substandard and could not be added on to.
So in essence this is a story about how an abusive government is trying to punish a man for his "nonconforming substandard home" by any means possible and not a story of a man bent on avoiding the law.
They may be trailer trash, but they should be entitled, like the rest of us, to a government responsive to its citizens and not a government that abuses it's powers to rid itself of whatever people it deems as unacceptable for whatever reason.