This man wanted to build shipping container homes. Garden City just sent him to jail
Jason Jones always wanted to live in a small space.
Two years ago, Jones quit his job as a teacher in Kansas City and moved to Garden City. He lived in his car for 7 months before he bought a house near the Boise River Greenbelt. He made his presence in the community known early, attending every City Council meeting. He could easily be spotted in the audience with his classic outfit — some kind of oversized football jersey and jeans — and a perpetually raised eyebrow.
As of January, he had become known around town as the guy with the shipping container. And it was Jones’ refusal to move that shipping container in his backyard that began a year-long fight with the city that culminated last week, when he was sentenced to five days at the Ada County Jail for refusing to comply with Garden City code enforcement.
Dig into any city code, and you’ll find dozens of rules about property maintenance: Grass must be clipped to a certain length before it is considered overgrown. You can’t park your RV outside someone’s property and live out of it. Your neighbor cannot raise farm animals in his backyard.
Most of the rules are common sense. But this year, city leaders began to notice a particular nuisance that had proliferated across Garden City: shipping containers.
Everything the hipsters touched in Garden City bred shipping containers. The Eddy — an outdoor bar at the 34th Street Market — operated out of a recycled cargo container. The Yardarm, a popular surfer-themed bar near the Greenbelt, slung beers from a repurposed container. The brewery Western Collective had plans to serve food out of a shipping container out back. A developer was planning to build a shipping container cafe cafe named the “Coffee Box.”
Perhaps most ambitious of all was Jones’ idea: 35 cargo containers arranged into tiny spaces for studios, retailers, and two 750-square foot apartments on the lot he owns at 208 33rd St. near the Boise River Greenbelt. He hoped to live in one of the apartments there himself one day.
In January, the City Council began to make plans to rid the city of the containers. Council members said they cheapened the city’s look and were not built to last.
At the time, Jones didn’t have any containers on his property. But his neighbor, Hannah Ball, did.
Ball, who has led the charge to redevelop the entire 34th Street area, kept two of the industrial containers behind her office, at 215 E. 34th St.
Jones offered to move them to his backyard, which backed up to hers. He told Ball he was in the midst of applying to build his cargo-container park, so maybe the city would consider the containers as part of his application. And if they moved them before the ban took effect, they could be grandfathered in, meaning the rule wouldn’t apply to them.
The ban took effect in February. Those who had been using shipping containers under temporary permits, like The Eddy, were forced to close. Western Collective’s plans were derailed. Jones had moved the containers to his lots early enough to be be grandfathered in.
Still, Jones’ neighbors complained.
From across the street, Lewis Landry noticed the new containers. He called code enforcement. Then the mayor filed an official complaint. The city argued that while Jones had not violated the shipping container ban, he had violated an older city code that requires erecting privacy fence up to 8 feet high around vehicles, dumpsters and storage units.
Code enforcement officers asked Jones multiple times to fence the containers or remove them from his property.
Garden City officials might have predicted that Jones would not comply easily. The city had previously told Jones that the tall weeds sprouting from his backyard were against city code. So he brought in truckloads of dirt to smother them. There, he thought, problem solved.
This was what Landry saw when he looked out his front window: two rusting shipping containers sitting slanted across an unwieldy weed field covered by a dirt hill. And indeed, it was Jones’ hill to die on.
After notifying Jones of his violation twice in February and twice in March, Garden City gave him a written notice in April that he had 30 days to bring his property into compliance. If not, he would be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable by a $300 fine or up to six months in jail, or both.
To hear Jones tell the story, compliance would have been giving in.
Giving into what — the law? No, Jones was certain he had become the victim of a power struggle in Garden City, between self-described developers like himself and Ball, who are trying to bring new, exciting projects to the city, and the city’s long-established leaders.
Jones decided to fight . Not only that — Jones would try to prove to a jury that the city had gone after him personally.
“It’s obviously targeted,” he said by phone.
Last spring, Jones spent hours driving up and down the streets of Garden City, looking for businesses that had also failed to erect privacy fences around their own dumpsters or storage units.
“We sort of escalated the situation,” Jones said, speaking of his company, Wee Boise. “We started by reporting a few businesses, then the next day we started reporting a few more.”
He estimates he filed over 120 complaints with the city about other businesses in Garden City that were violating the same statute Garden City had accused him of.
A few weeks later, Jones began to file records requests to determine whether the city was treating others’ violations as criminal cases. The city denied them, Jones said, arguing that the information was related to his pending criminal case.
As Garden City attorneys were building a criminal case against him, Jones in November put in his application to build the shipping container park.
A committee of citizens appointed to the city’s Design Review Board approved the project’s in October. But on Nov. 25, the City Council said no after a neighbor wrote to contest the Design Review Board’s decision.
The next day, Jones was already plotting how he could appeal the council’s decision. He didn’t get far.
Jones jailed over shipping container
Ten days later, Jones was sitting before a jury, defending — once again — his beloved shipping containers.
In this case, though, the stakes were much higher.
Jones’ lawyer, a public defender the city had appointed after he claimed he couldn’t pay for his own lawyer, argued that Jones had asked the city how he could best bring his property into compliance but was given little direction. For example, Jones was told to built a 6- or 8-foot tall privacy fence, but Garden City code doesn’t allow 8-foot tall fences on residential lots. Jones alleged that the city didn’t specify what height he should build, which made it hard for him to be in compliance.
But City Attorney Charles Wadams put forward a much simpler argument: Garden City code requires a privacy fence around storage areas. Jones refused to put it up.
“He was given multiple opportunities over and over again, and he refused to comply,” Wadams argued. “Fence it or remove it — it’s as easy as that.”
The jury on Dec. 5 found Jones guilty of failing to screen his shipping containers.
Ada County Magistrate John Hawley Jr. sentenced him to five days in jail, plus two years of probation. He also ordered Jones to remove the shipping containers from his property by Jan. 15. The judge also deemed that Jones could pay for his own lawyer, and ordered him to pay back the city for use of the public defender.
From Thursday until Tuesday morning, Jones did indeed live in a small space, much different than the one he imagined building: a cell in the Ada County jail.
The sentence shocked his friends, including Ball.
“We have to clean up this city, but we have to clean it up the right way,” Ball said in an interview. “Prosecuting people that don’t understand code — that’s not the answer.”
Jones said he will move the shipping containers on his property — but he’s not done fighting.
“I’m not deterred,” he said. “I’m going to continue to fight with the city so we can continue to have a unique and affordable Garden City.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
