A number of years ago here in Illinois there was a guy who purchased the entire common area of a HOA - parking, walkways, and pools: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-04-13/busi...Just last month at the scavenger sale in Cook County I came across an alley behind 6 houses.

-knock out approx 8-10' x 2' of poured concrete walkway, replace with pavers-landscape "yard" 15'x10'I'm looking for someone to do this work.

Another option would be to do a matching planting on the left side of the walkway, and just put sod in front of it to the sidewalk.  

If a kid leaves a bike blocking in the walkway;she takes it and puts it in the office; the parents have to come and ask for it. 

So far we have not gotten ANY actual applications.On side note our Realtor suggested we convert back to a 2 bedroom by turning a bedroom into the living room and opening up the doorway to a walkway to allow furniture to get into the room easily.  

They had hung track lights, an outlet, and a switch, all run in romex, which was connected to an extension cord that they ran through the door, across a walkway, and plugged into an outlet on the outside of the house.My first thought was "I don't want to evict them, but they are blatantly disregarding the lease." 

We've had tenants use their individual garden bed the wrong way, such as planting a tree, planting a bush too large for the spot, planting corn, planting giant sunflowers, planting blackberries, planting a grape vine.... in the narrow 2 foot bed between the walkway and the builiding!

Bit of a long story because I have to explain a bit more than I did in the initial message (clearly there is a lot more to this story, but hopefully the cliff notes version will suffice).Here are the code violations: exterior paint (it's a brick house, so only talking trim here, and yes it definitely needs it), repair downspout (round gutter hole has rectangular downspout in it), repair spalling or bulging concrete on walkway, driveway, steps.

There is a walk way from the street to the house.

So the argument can be made by him that they aren't actually going in your yard at all. 4 ft on the outside of his fence is more than enough room for a walkway.