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Unelected state bureaucrats are destroying our family home of 50 years—making it illegal to do basic and necessary maintenance on our own property. And because of that, we are going to lose our house.

Yes, you read that right.

Let me explain from scratch, because it’s honestly… pic.twitter.com/9Dl69ylSY9

— Joseph Niedermeyer (@JNiedermey33251) August 13, 2026

Unelected state bureaucrats are destroying our family home of 50 years—making it illegal to do basic and necessary maintenance on our own property. And because of that, we are going to lose our house.

Yes, you read that right.

Let me explain from scratch, because it’s honestly hard to believe.

Every year, a few tons of wind-blown sand pile up against our family’s home in Cannon Beach, Oregon. For over 50 years, once a year, our family has hired a crew—at our own expense, with a permit from our city—to move that sand back onto the beach. Same basic routine maintenance our whole life. It also keeps the public beach-access path next to us clear and safe for everyone. Nothing was ever harmed, and it cost the state nothing.

Last year, out of nowhere, the Oregon Parks & Recreation Department (OPRD) went over the head of our own city and denied us permission to keep doing it. Nothing about the sand changed; only the permission did. Overnight, cleaning the sand off our own property became illegal.

So we fought this overreach in court. Here’s what happened:

OPRD had a proper way to challenge our city's approval—through Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals—but they missed a deadline and then simply asserted their own separate permitting authority over the ‘ocean shore’.

The state argued that THEY, not our local town, get the final say, and that letting us clear it is bad for the beach, despite not one local complaint in 50 years, plus 50 years of approval from the town. We argued the obvious: this is our property, our town approved it, and we’ve done it responsibly for half a century. In April, an administrative judge sided with the state. The simple, maddening reason we lost: a judge gave the state bureaucrats, not the local town, the benefit of the doubt.

We’re appealing in a court of law, and believe that the law is clearly on our side. But here’s the trap: an appeal takes YEARS. Our house does not have years. The sand climbs higher every month—roughly 10 feet of sand has now buried our seawall, lower deck, and staircase. If this grinds through the courts at the state’s pace, we may “win”—but on a home that’s already gone.

And they’re doing it on the taxpayer’s dime: OPRD reportedly faces a $14 million shortfall, yet spends taxpayer money to block privately-funded maintenance that costs the state nothing. For 10 months they’ve stalled. It feels less like a fair process than a strategy to make fighting cost more than a family can bear.

That’s why we need public attention—and right now. Two minutes from you actually matters. We want people to reach out to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek by name because OPRD answers to her; by law, it is appointed by the Governor and serves at her pleasure. She sits on top of the agency doing this and has the power to step in. She simply has to care—and enough public pressure gives her the reason.

How you can help for free and for two minutes of your time:
- Go to http://SaveOurCannonBeachHome.org and send Governor Kotek the pre-written email (one tap).
- Or, repost this.
- Or, if you can, donate to the legal fund on the site. My mom put her entire retirement into fighting this in the courts because this house means so much to our family. She is pretty much tapped out now.

Also, to address two things many people have told us, that I have to answer:

“JUST DIG IT OUT! The fine’s cheaper than the lawyers.”
Love the spirit, but it’s wrong. One: it’s no cheap fine. Digging without permission means up to $1,000/day in city penalties (a misdemeanor—jail’s on the table), PLUS up to $10,000/day from the state, they can make us haul the sand back, hit us with double or triple damages—and it instantly blows up our appeal. It wouldn’t save us. It’d end the fight, in their favor. Two: we’re doing this the RIGHT way, because we ARE right—we won’t hand them the excuse to call US the criminals.

“YOU BUILT ON A BEACH! What’d you expect?”
This isn’t the ocean reclaiming a foolish house; it’s maintenance, no different from clearing vines off your walls. Nobody says, “Let the blackberries swallow your house; that’s nature.” Clearing what nature piles on your property is how people have lived in homes since forever. The sand was never the problem; the state just made it illegal to clean it up.

Lastly, this is bigger than us. If the state can overrule our own city and criminalize basic upkeep on private land, every homeowner on the Oregon coast is next. We’re just the first house the sand reaches. We will not be the last.