The complete record, and how to check it yourself.

01 The story in brief

In November 2025, Nevada County opened code-compliance case CC25-0261 against an 11-acre agricultural parcel outside Nevada City, after a complaint. A code officer inspected the property and the county issued a Violation Warning Letter alleging six violations, among them that several old farm buildings are “unpermitted structures.” One permit already in the parcel’s own file dates to June 1962, the month before the county had a building department. The land has been run since 2019 as HOME, a small cooperative housing community.

Between March and April 2026 the owner filed eight California Public Records Act requests seeking the written rules and records behind the case. Across those requests and three later rounds of follow-ups, five departments answered “no records exist” twenty-five separate times, and the inspection photographs the case opened with were lost, with no backup and no preservation hold during the active case. Those answers, quoted verbatim, are itemized on The record.

02 Key facts

03 The document set

The eight records requests below, with the county’s GovQA reference numbers. Every request, every piece of county correspondence, and every document produced sits in a public case file you can open on the county portal without filing anything — search by the reference number.

1. C007089-032426Code Compliance — full case history
   The complete code-enforcement file for the parcel, all cases back to 1988.
   Incomplete · active case file never produced
2. C007090-032426Planning Department
   Zoning history and the 1995 conditional-use permit U95-010.
   Incomplete · follow-up pending
3. C007094-032426Comparable enforcement
   Enforcement cases at comparable RA-zoned parcels within three miles.
   Incomplete · files produced instead of the requested summary; search method undisclosed
4. C007095-032426Building Department — permit history
   Permit history for the parcel back to 1962.
   Incomplete · follow-up pending
5. County Recorder (by email)Deed records
   Historical deed / chain-of-title records.
   Incomplete · 2001–2017 gap not produced
6. Assessor (by email)Assessor field cards
   Historical field cards and appraisal worksheets.
   Incomplete · field cards still pending
7. C007190-032426Environmental Health
   Septic, well, and on-site sewage records.
   Most complete · four responsive documents
8. C007192-041026Meeting notes + complaint email
   Notes from the March 20, 2026 meeting with the enforcement director, plus the initiating complaint email.
   Incomplete · notes produced as image; complaint heavily redacted

04 Pull the records yourself

Two county portals hold most of what you’d want. The records request portal carries every filed request and response; the code-compliance search shows resolved cases (active cases, including this one, are withheld during investigation — a withholding that is itself legally contested).

To request records directly, the relevant offices are:

• CDA Records — Code Compliance, Planning, Buildingcda.records@nevadacountyca.gov
• Code Compliance Divisioncodecompliance@nevadacountyca.gov · (530) 265-1362
• Environmental Healthenv.health@nevadacountyca.gov
• County RecorderNC.Recorder@nevadacountyca.gov
• Assessorassessor@nevadacountyca.gov

Want to report on the wider pattern rather than this one parcel? File your own records request has ready-to-send templates for county-wide code-enforcement data and the county’s own policies.

05 How to read this material

The county PDFs are primary sources — they are what they are. Any summaries or timelines on this site are aids for navigating a large document set, not a substitute for the originals; verify anything load-bearing against the source document before you rely on it or publish it. Where something is uncertain or contested, this site says so. No facts here are invented.

Parts of this account were organized with AI assistance, under direction and review. In a story that is partly about the disciplined use of that technology, saying so plainly is the point — see Read What It Wrote.