Their dream home became a nightmare.
A New Hampshire family is reportedly terrified by a homeless encampment that suddenly appeared behind their historic home, leading to a violent confrontation with the vagrants.
Robin Bach and her husband have spent years restoring their 19th century dream home in Concord to raise their two children, ages 8 and 11, but they’ve been plagued by campers living in the woods behind their palatial home.
They’ve received death threats, heard gunshots and screams from behind the trees, and a backyard swing set they bought during the 2020 pandemic has been left untouched by their frightened children, who now only play in the front yard.
“We can’t use our backyard. Our kids can’t go outside,” Bach said. He told the Concord Monitor“I want my children to be independent and feel safe going outside and playing, but that’s not happening.
“This is the worst ever, the worst ever.”
According to police records reviewed by The Post, Bach has called police 37 times since he bought the home in 2018 with grand plans to renovate and raise a family there, including six calls to check the neighborhood and six more for disturbances, domestic violence and trespassing incidents.
One day during their first summer in the house, Bach’s husband discovered a man who had been hiding out in the woods near their tent sitting in the backyard, and when he told him to leave, the man threatened to shoot him.
The man kept returning until Bach obtained a restraining order, and officers handcuffed him and took him away in front of their young children, she told the Concord Monitor.
In another incident, she was showing her son how to do the laundry when she heard terrifying screams coming from the camp – “Get away from me, get away from me” – and again called the police.
According to the media, a trash can two houses behind a neighboring house caught fire, and fire engines screamed down the street to put out the blaze.
Bach told the Monitor that when he asked for a quote to install a chain-link fence around his property, he was disappointed to learn it would cost $50,000.
“I don’t have the capacity to clean it up. I’m physically unable to do it myself,” she said of the trash visible from her home, “so it just stays there.”
New Hampshire has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country, and when she first moved in there were just one or two tents; now there are about six, according to the paper.
The encampment on Bach’s land poses unique challenges because it is adjacent to land and tracks owned by freight railroad company CSX.
Concord police can issue trespassing warrants at any time, but CSX also has its own police unit that searches the area and arrests people.
Police can clear the encampment, and have done so several times, and have tried to connect residents to local programs to help them find stable housing, but the city can only go so far on private property, meaning the trash is left there.
And after police evacuate the campers, they will return in the coming days, Bach told the Monitor.
“We have a pretty significant homeless problem,” Barrett Moulton, deputy director of patrol and police liaison for the city’s Homeless Task Force, told the outlet. “They’re going to be out there somewhere.”
“It’s like whack-a-mole,” Bach agreed. “You can’t just tell them to go away. They’ll go somewhere else. You have to give them somewhere to go.”
Bach knows the squatters behind her house need help and stability. She recently spoke to a man who works a day job and tries to keep the area around his property clean.
She and other local leaders believe the solution is to create dedicated homeless encampments within the city, where badly needed resources and outreach can be concentrated in one place.
“You can pitch your tents here, there are toilets and a rubbish dump,” she said. “They come here and we’ve told them hundreds of times to leave, but they won’t budge.”
The Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling last week that means homeless people can be ticketed and fined for camping on public property, potentially opening the door for cities across the country to take legal action against the homeless.
Last year, about 650,000 people in the United States were without permanent housing. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development:This would be a 12% increase from 2022 and the largest since tracking began in 2007.
