Family calls cops 37 times, receives death threats from encampment of violent vagabonds behind dream home: ‘I can’t even use my backyard’

Their dream home has become a place of nightmares.

A New Hampshire family is being terrorized by a homeless encampment that sprouted up behind their historic home, leading to violent encounters with the vagrants, according to a report.

Robin Bach and her husband spent years restoring their 19th-century dream home in Concord to raise their two children, ages 8 and 11 — but have been plagued by the campers living in the woods behind the palatial abode.

They’ve received death threats and have heard gunshots and screams from beyond the tree line. A swingset in their backyard, bought in 2020 during the pandemic, sits untouched by her terrified children, who will only play in the front yard.

“I can’t even use my backyard. My kids can’t go out there,” Bach told the Concord Monitor. “I would like my children to be independent and feel comfortable going outside and playing and they won’t.

“This is the worst it’s ever been, It’s the worst it’s ever been.”

Since purchasing the house in 2018 with grand plans to renovate and raise a family, Bach has called police 37 times, according to police records reviewed by the newspaper. Six calls were for an area check, another six for disturbances as well as domestic violence and criminal trespassing incidents.

During one of their first summers in the house, Bach’s husband found a man, who they had previously seen lurking in the woods near some tents, sitting in their backyard. When he asked the man to leave, the interloper threatened to shoot him.

The man returned several times until Bach filed a restraining order against him — and cops hauled him off in handcuffs as her young children watched, she told the Concord Monitor.

In another incident, she was teaching her son how to do laundry when they heard chilling screams of some yelling, “Get off me, get off me” coming from the encampment, prompting another police call.

A dumpster fire behind a neighbor’s home two doors down sent wailing firetrucks rushing up her street to put out the blaze, the outlet said.

When Bach asked for a quote to install a chain link fence around her property, she was disheartened to learn that it would cost $50,000, she told the Monitor.

“I can’t afford to clean it up. I can’t physically do it myself,” she said about the garbage visible from the house. “So the trash remains.”

What was once just one or two tents when she first moved in, the camp has ballooned to about half a dozen, as New Hampshire experiences one of the largest percentage increases in homelessness in the country, according to the paper.

The encampment on Bach’s property poses a unique challenge because it borders property and train tracks owned by CSX, a freight railroad company.

While Concord police can go and issue no-trespassing orders at any time, CSX also has its own police detail that will sweep the area and arrest people.

Police are able to clear out the camp and have done so a few times and tried to connect them with local programs to find stable housing — but that’s the extent of the city’s involvement on private property, meaning the litter stays.

And, after the police have moved the campers out, they just return in a matter of days, Bach told the Monitor.

“We have a pretty significant homeless problem,” Barrett Moulton, the deputy chief of patrol and police liaison on the city’s homeless steering committee, told the outlet. “They’re going to be somewhere.”

“It’s Whack-a-Mole,” Bach echoed. “You can’t just ask them to leave, they’re going to go somewhere else. You have to give them someplace to go.”

Bach understands that squatters behind her home need assistance and stability. She recently spoke to a man who holds a day job and tries to keep the area around his ten clean.

She and other local leaders believe a solution would be to create a designated campsite for the homeless in the city, where much-needed resources and outreach can be concentrated in one place.

“You can put your tent here, here’s bathrooms, dumpsters,” she said. “They’ve come here and told them to move a million times, they don’t move.”

The Supreme Court ruled last week that homeless people can be ticketed and fined for camping on public property in a landmark decision, which will likely lead to cities across the country to take legal action against the unhoused.

Last year, about 650,000 individuals in the US lacked a permanent place to live, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 12% increase from 2022 and the most since tracking began in 2007.