CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Purchase for a Purpose was supposed to be triple fold: help sell a south Charlotte home currently in short sale, help 20 small business owners sell their goods inside the home and raise money for the charity Bright Blessings, which benefits homeless children.

Julie Quill organized it.  She says of the reaction from the city, "It's just uncalled for, it's really sad, I just wanna pray for the people that their heart will be softened."

On day one, last Thursday, Quill says two city attorneys showed up and told her to remove the Bright Blessings sign and open house sign from the yard. She says she did.

On day two, a city code enforcer shut the event down.  "As soon a he came in and tried to flash his authority, and say you have 15 to 30 minutes at max and kept going like this (tapping) to his watch and looking around, making sure we were getting out of there."

The city tells us they got several complaints from neighbors about traffic.  Quill says there was a handful of luxury cars parked in the home's driveway and directly in front of the home.

City emails about the event contain the subject line "Scotland Ave. Walmart."  City attorney Mac McCarley says the event was an illegal retail operation and a zoning violation.  McCarley tells FOX Charlotte, "You mentioned to me earlier that they had permits, the answer is no they didn't, they didn't have any permits, they couldn't get permits for an illegal sale in a neighborhood."

But Quill did get a permit, issued on December first, "to conduct an attic sale, garage sale, yard sale or similar type of sale" to be located at the home.

"I think the biggest problem was where it was, not what it was," says attorney John Snyder.  He calls this a "clear overreach" by the city of Charlotte, acting on behalf of some well-connected residents.  He says, "This was purely we're inconvenienced, we know important people, we're gonna do something about it.  It really is how the Grinch stole Christmas, Myers Park style.  It's outrageous."

The home is actually in the Eastover neighborhood.  Quill says she sent out an invite to neighbors two days before the event and didn't get any complaints.  She says these type of events have been happening in Charlotte for the past five years with no problems.  She wants the city to apologize by making a donation to Bright Blessings.