Won't You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk. [View all]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/elon-musk-texas-neighbors.html

https://archive.ph/0JGeh

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk.
Residents of an upscale enclave outside Austin, Texas, learned the hard way what it’s like when a multibillionaire moves into the mansion next door. Some of them have started a ruckus over it.
By Kirsten Grind
May 5, 2025 Updated 11:41 a.m. ET

At first, residents of the upscale cul-de-sac in West Lake Hills, Texas, did not know who had moved into the 6,900-square-foot, six-bedroom mansion next door.

Then construction workers arrived to erect a 16-foot chain-link fence around the $6 million property, which is one of four homes on the leafy street. They also installed an outward-facing camera. Next, a fleet of cars — many of them Teslas — began parking on the street. Three times a day, a shift change signaled security personnel coming and going at the house. Once, the driver of a passing car shouted late at night that he was looking for a party at “E’s house.”

No one liked the commotion, or the traffic, or the keypad-activated gate opening and closing for workers and cars at all hours. So even when they learned through word of mouth that their new neighbor was Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, that did not stop some of them from grousing to the City of West Lake Hills about his mansion.

The complaints have since escalated into an uproar over city ordinances, permits and exceptions known as variances — so much so that the matter of Mr. Musk’s house landed in a contentious Zoning and Planning Commission meeting last month. The debate is headed next to a West Lake Hills City Council session, scheduled for May 14.

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