‘This is my home’: City forcing Navy vet out of storage building he’s called home for 7 years. Claiming he ‘doesn’t bother anybody.’

WSOC-TV reporter Dave Faherty says a U.S. Navy veteran in Newton, North Carolina is being told to leave the small outbuilding he’s quietly lived in for more than seven years, after the city says it received complaints and discovered the structure was never permitted as a residence. The veteran, John Eller, calls the building his home, and he says the situation is pushing him toward a grim backup plan: a tent in the woods.

“This place is not a million-dollar mansion,” Eller tells Faherty in the report. “I know this, but this is my home.”

Faherty reported live from Newton and said city officials told him they had no idea anyone was living inside the storage building behind the home. The property owner, a longtime friend of Eller’s, said she did get permission in 2018 to run power to that building, and she believed the setup could be allowed if it met code – at least under the county’s rules.

Now, Faherty says, the city is drawing a hard line: the permit was for a storage shed, not a living space, and the situation is considered a zoning and code problem that needs to be corrected.

What makes the story stick is the contrast. On one side is a man saying he’s tried to stay invisible and not cause trouble. On the other is a city saying it has ordinances it must enforce for health and safety, even when the human consequences are rough.

A Quiet Life Behind A House, Until A Complaint Brought The City

Faherty said John Eller has lived in the building along North Caldwell Avenue for the last seven and a half years. Earlier this week, Eller told him, code enforcement and police came to his door and told him he would have to move after a complaint from a neighbor.

“They didn’t like the way I was living,” Eller said.

Then he added what sounds like the core of his defense: “I don’t ask for much. I don’t bother anybody. You don’t even know I’m here. All I want is to be left alone.”

Faherty said the city told him it received multiple complaints about people living in makeshift structures on the property. That detail is important because it suggests officials aren’t treating this as a one-time misunderstanding, but as a repeated concern being reported from outside the property.

Faherty also said the city’s position is that the original permit was for a storage shed – not for someone’s home – and that code enforcement and zoning ordinances were violated.

That’s where the pressure point forms. A storage building can be safe enough for tools, lawn equipment, and boxes. But once you put a person inside—sleeping, cooking, staying warm, using electricity – cities tend to treat that as a different level of risk, even if the person living there insists it’s working fine.

And to be fair, cities have seen the worst-case scenarios: fires, unsafe wiring, blocked exits, carbon monoxide, and medical emergencies where responders can’t access a structure built for storage. Those concerns aren’t imaginary.

But Faherty’s report also makes clear that, in this case, there’s another reality: the building has been home for years, and the man living inside it says he has nowhere else to go.

A High School Friendship And A Place To Land

Faherty reported that Eller served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He is friends with the property owner, Janet Nance Cuthbertson, and the two have known each other since high school.

According to Faherty, when Cuthbertson learned Eller didn’t have a place to live in 2018, she suggested the outbuilding and had power run to it. She showed Faherty paperwork she obtained back then allowing power to be connected.

Cuthbertson said she believed that once the building met code, it could be lived in under county rules, but not on city property.

“We were under the understanding that once it met code, that it could be lived in by the county,” she told Faherty. “It can be on county property. It can’t on city property.”

That quote captures the kind of confusion that can happen when rules change at invisible borders – city versus county, different enforcement levels, different interpretations. People often assume that if they can get power legally, they can occupy the building legally too, especially if nobody complains.

But zoning doesn’t work that way. A permit for electrical service does not automatically transform a storage building into a legal dwelling. Faherty’s report suggests that might be the hard lesson unfolding here.

“Power Will Be Cut Off”: The City’s Leverage

Faherty said Cuthbertson told him the city has not set a deadline for Eller to leave, but she was told the power will be cut off if he does not move out.

That detail is especially heavy because it’s a form of pressure that doesn’t require a dramatic eviction scene. If the power is shut off, living there becomes nearly impossible, especially for an older man, and especially if temperatures drop or medical needs come into play.

When Faherty asked Eller where he would go, Eller gave an answer that doesn’t sound like a plan so much as a surrender.

“A tent in the woods,” Eller said. “That’s the only option I have.”

That line is hard to read without feeling the weight of it. People talk about homelessness like it’s always a big-city sidewalk problem, but here Faherty is showing a version that looks like rural disappearance – someone pushed out of a hidden corner of a property and into the trees.

It also underlines a strange feature of modern housing: you can “solve” a code violation and still create a humanitarian problem. The ordinance may be enforced properly, but the outcome can still feel morally ugly.

The City Says It’s Trying To Help

Faherty reported that the city of Newton says it is trying to help, and has reached out to the Western Piedmont Council of Government’s homelessness response team to see if they can assist Eller.

The city also said the property owner is working to bring the property into compliance.

And in a statement included in Faherty’s reporting, city officials said their priority is to apply ordinances “consistently and fairly” while ensuring the safety, health, and welfare of residents.

That’s the official language cities often lean on in situations like this, because they’re trying to avoid setting a precedent where any shed, garage, or outbuilding becomes an unregulated living unit.

At the same time, it’s hard not to notice the timing problem Faherty highlighted: the city says it didn’t know someone lived there until a complaint came in. So for years, the situation was quietly tolerated by silence, and now it’s being corrected by enforcement.

That can feel like whiplash to the person affected. A setup can seem “fine” right up until it suddenly isn’t.

A Small Building, A Big Question

Faherty’s story raises a question that keeps repeating across the country: what do you do when the only “affordable housing” someone can access is not legal housing?

Eller’s outbuilding is clearly not luxurious, and he doesn’t present himself as someone looking for a fight. He presents himself as someone looking for stability, privacy, and peace, and he says he’s tried to stay out of everyone’s way.

But cities don’t regulate based on “he seems quiet.” They regulate based on what is allowed, what is safe, and what can be defended consistently.

That’s where the story becomes fascinating and frustrating at the same time. Both sides can sound reasonable in isolation. A city doesn’t want unsafe living conditions. A veteran doesn’t want to be pushed into a tent.

The tragedy is that those two realities are colliding in a place that looks, from the outside, like the simplest solution imaginable: a small building behind a house that kept one man off the street.

Faherty leaves the audience with the sense that the next steps aren’t fully decided yet – no deadline, a promise of outreach, a threat to cut power, and a man who says the woods might be his only remaining address.

And that’s the uncomfortable takeaway: when housing is scarce and rules are rigid, “this is my home” can stop being a statement of pride and start sounding like a plea.