Woman Who Lives “Off the Grid” Threatened With Eviction – From Her Paid-For Home

Robin Speronis, a Florida woman who lives off the grid, is being threatened with losing her home due to her “alternative lifestyle”.

Last month, Robin’s story was featured on Fox 4 news in Florida. She does not have a refrigerator, oven, running water, or electricity.

Robin explains her decision to live off the grid:

“It was an interest in empowering myself, like we did when we got off the health care system. I wanted to look at every other part of my lifestyle and say, do I need this? Is this of value to me? If it went away tomorrow, what would I do? The more I got into it, the more exciting, the more of an adventure it became. My message was to create, so I created a happy place… a place where I get up, and I’m like this is beautiful.”

Most of what Robin owns was free, donated, or bought for next to nothing.

She cooks on a propane camping stove, and her electronics run on solar-charged batteries.

Robin gets her water from rain barrels. She uses a colloidal-silver generator to disinfect the rain water:

“I plug this into my inverter and my battery pack. This light will get brighter and brighter as silver micro particles are suspended in the water. It’s natures antibiotic,” she explains.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), after Robin was featured on the local news, authorities took notice: the day after the feature, Robin was slapped with a notice to vacate her property.

“A code enforcement officer came, knocked on the door then posts a placard that says uninhabitable property, do not enter.”

The notice cites international property maintenance code and states the property is unsafe to be lived in. Robin said code enforcement has never been inside her home and would have no idea if her property is safe.

The city code compliance manager told Fox 4 that he tagged the home because it doesn’t have running water or electricity – but neither is mentioned as a requirement in the code cited by the city on the notice.

Robin said she owns her home free and clear and her taxes are up to date.

“Putting a woman who lives by herself, who is a widow, out on the street without any due process of law is unfathomable. Where is the justice? Why did they choose me…because I was exercising my First Amendment rights of free speech in discussing living off the grid.”

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Comment by Anondroid on December 17, 2013 at 1:27am: propane camp stove indoors IS stupid, if you don't inspect the stove for leaks before every use and make sure to maintain it properly. as long as all the gaskets and seals are inspected regularly and maintained, it should be fine. that being said, she's an old widow...i doubt she inspects the stove every time she uses it. either way, though, it is just as risky to use city gas. my mom had the pilot light go out on her furnace one year and she had to evacuate the house because it leaked gas throughout the whole house before she noticed it. so i would say that using propane carries the same risk as hooking into the city's grid for gas. i personally prefer a wood stove, cast iron pans, etc. call me old school, but wood is free if you have an axe or can check craigslist. people give it away all the time. why waste the money filling up a propane tank? either way, if the city specifically said the notice was because of "no running water or electricity," she should still just get the 12v pump and hook the rain barrels into her tap. then the city is just arguing semantics. they would have to leave her alone because she was obeying their illegitimate commands exactly to the letter. she could even get a dc to ac inverter and hook her whole house up to her battery bank so they can't say she doesn't have electricity in her wall outlets.

Comment by Dave Svoboda on December 17, 2013 at 1:10am: Lee, camp stoves are notoriously leaky, compared to stoves/ranges meant to be used indoors. The gas is flammable, nee explosive. They also emit lots of CO, which is a concern in the winter when you have to be zipped up tight, if you don't have significant heating.

Comment by Dave Svoboda on December 16, 2013 at 8:57pm: There's nothing illegal about being off the grid. Lots of farm properties in the midwest have well water, sceptic tank, solar power, propane, and wood supplemental heat. It's tried, true, and safe.

But running a propane camp stove indoors is just stupid.

Comment by Andrew McEwen on December 16, 2013 at 6:22pm: If she opens the tap the water is running. Is there a definition of running water?

Can't she use this to get her property taxes reduced?

Comment by Dave Svoboda on December 16, 2013 at 5:04pm: There's nothing illegal about being off the grid. Lots of farm properties in the midwest have well water, sceptic tank, solar power, propane, and wood supplemental heat. It's tried, true, and safe.

But running a propane camp stove indoors is just stupid.

Comment by Richard Harper on December 16, 2013 at 4:04pm: She shouldn't have to prove anything. She owns the home, pays her taxes and is not a sanitation hazard or her home or surrounding area an eyesore. The city should butt out.

Comment by Citizen Quasar on December 16, 2013 at 3:17pm: Anondroid: That all sounds pretty accurate to me.

Comment by Anondroid on December 16, 2013 at 2:12pm: and she can easily win her lawsuit by buying a 12v pump to pump water from her rain barrels into the tap or to pump the water from her rain barrels to another barrel in the attic that is fed into her pipes and gravity fed to the tap. she already has a solar panel and battery, so they really can't say she doesn't have electricity. hooking the rain barrels into the tap would provide running water, and poof! there goes their code violation. it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to side-step the bogus codes that are pushed on the general populous these days. if you take the codes exactly literally how they are written, and you make sure that you meet the exact, literal requirements...then there isn't a judge or jury in the country that can find you guilty of anything. this is why i prefer to build my "off-grid" cabin way out in the boonies where there are NO codes to violate. i could build a shack out of monkey crap and nobody would say anything. zebra blood could run through my pipes and i could run all my electronics off a farm of gerbils running on wheels and i wouldn't have to worry. people who want to live an actual "free" lifestyle need to stop submitting to the powers that be, living in little boxes ten feet away from the next little box...urban/suburban hell.....and get the hell out of there. the more people "drop out" of society, live off the land, and stop contributing to the pockets of the fat cats, the more power we take away from them. they only have power through controlling our tax dollars. if they don't have those tax dollars, they have nothing. look at the recent debacle over the debt ceiling. we need to force their hand by cutting them off of the teat. there needs to be an "atlas shrugged" situation soon, before every last ounce of our country's wealth is transferred overseas. anyone who produces anything in this country needs to make a plan, get prepared, then just drop out. the leaches will kill each other, the corrupt government will fall, then the producers can step back in and rebuild our great nation. until then, we will be stuck in the never-ending debt prison that has been created for us by our "masters." if you disagree, let me know. maybe i'm just a moron and need more fluoride in my water to calm me down.

Comment by Anondroid on December 16, 2013 at 1:55pm: i think a few people here skipped their "reading and understanding" classes. the lady was given a notice to vacate the property. that means she isn't supposed to be living there. that's why when the news anchor asked her if she was living there since november, she said "I'd rather not answer that." she was already burned once by being on the news talking about her situation. that's why the city tracked her down and put the notice on her door. why would she screw herself again and tell the same news station that she is disobeying the notice to vacate? so that some black-bag group can come kidnap her and put her in jail for violating the notice? it boggles the mind that people have so many "questions" to things that were clearly part of the story if you paid attention. as far as the international ordinance....they can apply whatever they want now, because we let them. nobody resists, so tyranny grows. i'm surprised they even posted a notice and didn't just kick in the door and kidnap her right away. maybe o-bozo can call in a drone strike if she doesn't vacate. not as if he hasn't done it in the past without repercussions.

Comment by Citizen Quasar on December 16, 2013 at 1:09pm: There are unanswered questions here.

1. Have you been living here? "I'd rather NOT answer that." Why?

Unless this lady has allodial title to her property, the state owns her house and can do whatever it wants to with it.This is why she has to pay annual rent...uh...property taxes.

2. Why is an international ordinance being applied. This ordinance is ridiculous anyway because there are millions of people worldwide that have neither running water or electricity.