Neighbours often come together to help each other out, but residents of one street in Ottawa are teaming up to stop one of their own from getting his wish.
Hassan Moghadam bought a property in the city’s Glebe neighbourhood. He plans to tear down the existing house on the site and build a new home for his family of five in its place.
Moghadam’s neighbours don’t like his proposal, saying the rebuilt house will quite literally stick out – because the plans call for the new home’s foundation to start three metres closer to the front of the property, breaking up a row of evenly spaced properties.
“It will change the look and feel of the property,” neighbour Dominique Milne told CTV Ottawa. “People buy in the Glebe … because they want a certain cachet.”
Some of the neighbours have launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover their legal fees as they challenge Moghadam’s plan at a provincial tribunal.
Moghadam has no plans to alter his design. He says he’ll fight back, both to show that he’s playing by the rules and to show his children the importance of standing up for oneself.
“It was a little bit difficult to accept that there were so many people against [us],” Moghadam said.
The house is currently sitting vacant, blocked off from its neighbours by construction fencing.
With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Leah Larocque
