Treehouses are the sort of thing grandparents might build for their grandkids to play in. But for Shawnee Chasser of North Miami, Florida, a treehouse is simply the place she calls home.
The 65-year-old built and moved into her first treehouse in 1992. She’s lived in her current treehouse for the past decade, The Miami Herald first reported.
“When I am up in my treehouse in thunder, lightning and rain, I am in heaven,” Chasser told the Herald. “There’s nothing nicer, more spiritual, more wonderful.”
While Chasser calls the treetop abode her very own personal “paradise,” Miami-Dade County officials disagree. For over a year, the purple-haired grandmother has been fighting for the right to keep her home, after the county hit her with several code violations, saying she didn’t have the right permits or permission to build the structure and add running water and electricity to it. She’s already paid $3,000 in fines and faces thousands more, along with the prospect of her home being torn down.
Chasser, who sells her own brand of organic popcorn at Whole Foods locations in Florida, says she simply can’t afford the fight.
This week, she launched a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for legal fees and fines she’s accrued in order to save the home she shares with her two cats, two dogs and two raccoons.
County officials say the issue is about Chasser’s safety as well as that of her neighbors.
“This has got to be my first time ever of somebody living in a treehouse,” Ricardo Roig, Miami-Dade’s code enforcement division director, told The Miami Herald.
As for Chasser, she says she won’t go down without a fight.
She’s “prepared to sit on the roof and let them tear it down with me on it,” she told WSVN 7 News Miami. “This is my home and my paradise and my love.”
h/t Miami-Herald
Clarification: Language has been updated to reflect that Shawnee Chasser built her first treehouse in 1992. She’s been living in her current treehouse for the past 10 years.
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