Staff
The D.C. Clothesline
December 16, 2013
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.