The Story of HOME · Sierra foothills, Nevada County · in my words
I came here to build a home, not to keep a case file.
HOME sits on eleven acres of foothill land outside Nevada City. I started it in 2019, and the community that grew here has shared it since, the barns, the water, the work. This is that story, and the chapter it is in right now.
The current chapter · 2025–2026
It began last November, with a letter naming three of my buildings.
The county said two of them “do not appear to be permitted,” and called a third, an old shed, a “dangerous structure.” On the barns, the problem was not that they were built illegally. It was that an officer could not find the paperwork. So I went looking in the county's own files, and I asked the county for the rest. Here is what came back.
I am not looking for a fight with Nevada County. I am asking it to do one plain thing before it tells a family its barns are illegal: read its own files first.
— Josh Wolf · HOME, outside Nevada CityWhat the county's own record says
the county's own fileBefore anyone asked, the county had already written the answer down, more than once.
A county file once called the barn it now cites “existing.”
In 1995 a county planning file described a barn on this parcel as existing. Thirty years later, an officer wrote that it “does not appear to have a permit.”
Nevada County Planning File U95-010The county has recorded buildings on this lot since 1962.
The county's building department did not exist before July 1, 1962. Its own 1962 permit for the lot records, in its own hand, OTHER BLDGS. ON LOT: 3. Whether those are the buildings it cites today is not established; what the record shows is that this lot was never empty, and that what stood here before 1962 was never the county's to permit.
Nevada County Building Permit #644 · 1962What the county cannot produce
No records existAsked for the records behind its own case, the county answered, again and again, that they were not there.
The photographs the county took itself.
A code officer photographed the property on November 18, 2025. Those photographs are the basis of the citation. Five months later they were gone. The county has no record of when, how, or by whom they were deleted, no destruction-authorization form, and no notice that the file should have been preserved.
Code Compliance · 2026 records responsesThe rule the whole case turns on.
The case rests on whether a building is old enough to predate the permit era. The county says it has no written policy for making that call, no grandfathering provision, and no ordinance that ever tied the permit requirement to a building's age. “Unpermitted” is officer judgment, with nothing written behind it.
Planning & Building Depts. · 2026 responsesA certificate of occupancy for anything at all.
Asked for a certificate of occupancy for the cited structures, the county's answer reached every building on the parcel, the lawful main house included: “then we do not possess them.” The same records-absence that condemns the barns covers the house a family sleeps in.
Building Dept. · 2026 responsesOne family's file is a story. Fifty is a pattern.
If the county did this to you, stand up too.
I would rather fix this than fight it. If Nevada County has cited you on records it could not produce, add your case. One family's file is a story. Fifty is a pattern, and a pattern is how a county finally looks at itself.
And HOME is only one case. Neighbors across the county are making the same demand — 530 UTOPIAN, a county-wide campaign with a report and a phone line: (530) 886-7426.
It counted the buildings once. It wrote it down. Make them read it back.
— Josh Wolf, HOME