City Shuts Down Yard Sale for Cancer Victim in Oregon

Aug. 18, 2011 — -- The city of Salem, Ore., shut down the yard sale of a woman who had been selling her belongings to pay for her medical bills. The reason? A city ordinance limits a home to hosting a yard sale three times a year, as first reported by ABC affiliate KATU.

Jan Cline, 64, said she did not know such a law existed. She thought she was being unobtrusive by hosting the yard sale in the backyard, but a city code enforcement officer on Monday came to inform her that a neighbor had complained and she was breaking the law.

Cline, who was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer on July 1, has been unable to run her two businesses, an educational toy company and a limousine service. But after being devastated by the diagnosis of the disease, which can be terminal, she thought a yard sale would temporarily help her pay for medical bills and house payments while she is a near-invalid. Meanwhile she is staying in the home of a friend to avoid walking up and down her stairway.

"I'm not supposed to be walking now because it eats through the bones and puts holes in the bones. I could walk and break a leg," she said.

Cline said she is a "resourceful" and "hard-headed" business woman.

"I'm not the type to let the government pay my way," Cline told ABC News. "If something happens I jump to and take care of it. That was my solution. I thought for half an hour. Have a major garage sale and sell my life."

The local chamber of commerce groups and friends have volunteered in the four or five weekend yard sales this summer. She said she made about a "couple hundred" dollars each weekend.

But when the city informed her she had to shut down the sales or pay a $380 fine or even face jail time, she said she cried.

"I just hope that nobody else has to go through this kind of thing," Cline told KATU. "I hope no one else has to give their lives away for nickels and dimes and then be told they can't even do that. I hope nobody else has to do this ever."

The city's ordinance 96.165 about yard sales or garage sales states "it shall be unlawful to conduct within the City of Salem more than three garage sales in any calendar year, each of said sales to extend no longer than three days."