Help Lisa Knight save her home

Hi, my name is Chris Rogers and I'm setting up this GoFundMe for Lisa Knight. Lisa is a single mother of two who is being forced out of her home and into the cold by neighbors who have altered the natural waterflow off her property which is causing extensive flooding and damage to her home and property. Since we started dating last year, her home has flooded SIX times! Mother's day she had 3ft of water in her basement. July 17th she had 5ft of water, later in the fall she had 1.5ft of water, in early December she had a flood of 2ft of water and then last week on February 17th, she got another 5ft of water in her basement! I just went there this morning (February 23rd) and, once again, there is 21 inches of water in her basement!

When this much water gets into a house, the electricity and gas get shut off for safety reasons. Walls & floors have to be scrubbed and sanitized to prevent mold and appliances must be serviced to dry out and hopefully restart. Until this year, all flooding occurred in warmer weather, so she was able to temporarily "live" there with no hot water and no furnace until things dried out. But now it is Winter and the house is sitting cold and frozen and is uninhabitable. She is literally out in the cold with nowhere to live.

I contacted the Medina Gazette and you may have even seen the article written this morning (Gazette Article 02 23 2022 ), bringing light to Lisa's dilemma. While the article highlighted Lisa's ongoing problem, it did not spell out some of the facts that show that this flooding is being caused by neighbors who obstructed a natural waterflow through her yard.

Across the street from Lisa's house, there is a swampy pond that drains onto her property to then flow down to Chippewa Lake. When this overflow was constructed many decades ago, the natural ravine behind her house let the overflow dump its water behind Lisa's shed to enter a natural stream that led water to Chippewa Lake. Over the last 20+ years, Lisa's neighbors downstream have filled in the ravine on their properties with a small 24" diameter pipe and covered the pipe with 15ft of dirt, cement, and garbage in order to gain more useful land on their properties, however their changes have made Lisa's property dangerous and unsafe. There is no longer any sign of the natural ravine on these other properties.

The original permit for the pipe was for a shorter pipe with only 3-4ft of dirt allowed to cover it such that even a terrible flood that overpowered the pipe, would raise up over the dirt and continue to let water flow to Chippewa Lake without ever getting near Lisa's house. All this activity is documented in a 6" thick file held in the County Engineers office. The County issued a legal permit back in 2001 to build the first pipe. Since then, the neighbors have continued building, dumping, adding on to the pipe, restricting its diameter and covering it with 15 ft of dirt!! ALL the subsequent activity was illegal and was documented by the county, yet NOTHING was done to stop it. Now Lisa is the only property to suffer from these injustices. Also, it was never disclosed by the prior owners that this house had flooding issues even though there are pictures in the Co. Engineer's file showing the house under water PRIOR to Lisa purchasing it. This is fraud committed by the prior owners as well as the Realty company.

All parties involved from the Township trustees, the Mayer of Chippewa Lake, the Township service director, the County Engineers office etc... all parties can see what the cause of the problem is, but all parties tell Lisa it is a "civil matter" that she is responsible for taking on herself. In other words, she must sue all parties involved, to fix what is obviously wrong, even though none of this was Lisa's fault. Lisa hired a lawyer last July who took lots of her money but never filed a suit nor did he do anything to help her. Her property has flooded five more times since then. She fired the first lawyer and met with a new potential lawyer last week to start over. During the meeting, she was told it might take $5000 retainer fee to hire this firm and costs could exceed $20,000.00 by the time any solution is found. Keep in mind her house has flooded two more times since that meeting just last week.

Lisa needs help. Lisa needs money to hire a lawyer who can get this problem fixed. She needs the township's water re-routed so that it no longer flows onto her property. Lisa needs the pipe and dam built illegally behind her to be dug up and fixed such that water can, once again, flow off her property faster than it flows onto her property. If neither of those things happen, she needs to be able to sue enough people to get enough money to be able to walk away from her house or sell it at a loss and still have money to purchase a new home safe enough for her and her children.

Any money collected here will go directly to Lisa's legal fees and also to help Lisa when it comes time to purchase a new home if she must walk away from this one at a tremendous loss. Lisa would never sell this without disclosing the flooding issues and that means her house is virtually worthless as no one would buy it for the fair market value if these problems aren't solved. That leaves her stuck hopelessly with a house that can't be lived in, nor can it be sold in order to purchase a safer one for her and her kids.