From what I have seen, the white varieties (not all, but many) can get VERY BIG. They are really TREES. They will drop leaves, seed pods, flowers on your roof and in your gutters, being planted that close to the house. So, yes, unless you want to prune every year, and deal with the debris, it might be best to eliminate them or move them. Nothing you would have to do right away. If you want to try to move them, it would be best during the winter or late spring when they are dormant. You could cut them way back and try to move one or more further (like maybe 10-15 feet?) from the house. If you like them, that is, they will provide some nice shade to your yard. The white varieties usually have really nice exfoliating bark too.

NC has, or used to have, a very active and involved urban forestry 'posse '. I see that the North Carolina Urban Forest Council is (NCUFC) still going strong. If you aren't already a member, think about becoming involved. A good organization can help you in many ways. If your community has a local newspaper and/or television stations, you may be in a position to do some pubic education....IF you are a good writer and public speaker. Type 'North Carolina Crape Murder ' into Google and you'll find several Extension publications on the subject. Make it a more general 'crape murder ' search and you'll hit the jackpot. You can copy the articles and distribute them far and wide. Your local Extension people may be able to help with publications, newsletters, or even workshops. In my experience, winter pruning workshops for the public can be very popular. If you educate the public, they can help protect your community against ignorant pruning practices. If your local public works department is responsible for crapes on public property....get those articles to the people in charge, and the mayor. Are you an interested citizen or in the business? The tree in your post has been permanently ruined. It will never have the beautiful structure it was meant to.

What you described about the multiple branches radiating around the trunk, just below where the trunk has been top cut, is a typical growth pattern for such drastic top pruning. All too often growers have already done such pruning to larger crape myrtles when they are shipped to the retail nurseries. Did your area get the recent days' hard freeze around the Easter holiday? If so the CM in question might have a lot of dead wood which needs to be pruned out. If such a freeze happened, watch the tree as its remaining buds leaf out again. Once the tree appears to be fully leafing out enough to look recovered from any winter or freeze damage; totally remove any trunks or branches which fail to releaf. Also from the trunks nearest your house, completely remove all the way to the trunk any branches in the canopy which you can clearly tell will grow to infringe on your roof. Throughout the following growing seasons feed the tree with slow release quality food, and after every week which fails to provide an inch of rain for the shrub, suppliment the tree with that much water. Over the summer let the tree bloom naturally, and do not prune off the resulting seeds in an effort to extend your bloom season to the first freeze of late fall or early winter. By letting the tree bloom by itself and by being patient if it seems to slow down in bloom presentation after the first bloom flush; the tree will be enabled to put forth effort into thickening its branches and developing its proper rooting perportions. After the tree goes dormant, depending on when temps drop low enough for that, consider the space which any branching from the trunks still invade your roof line. cut, at that time, each trunk, all the way down to the root ball, whose canopy clearly will grow to infringe on your roof line. Hopefully when you have accomplished all the above pruning you will end up with the best of either a one or three main leader trunks. Then, in early march of the next year, prune out again all brittle dead wood, brake off the remaining seed pods and their twigs. Then turn your focus onto any remaining radiating branches which are growing just beneath the previously described, chopped off trunks. Preserve only a flexible and clearly healthy branch which grows the most directly upward and toward the direction where you want the trunk to continue growing. Prune away any other branches which are growing around the trunk near the same level of the healthy upward growing branch you selected to retain. To repeat: the one branch you choose to keep growing off the end of such chopped off trunks should be the one out of the ratiating bunches which appeares to be growing most upright, and growing in the right direction for the retained branch to assume the role of developing into a continuation of the trunk. Hopefully each single branch you select to continue the remaining trunks are thick enough to survive the following winter freezes. If not you will need to wrap each and their tunks with cotton insulator wrap prior to each freeze. If the temps are forecast to drop down to a hard freeze than add bubble wrap around the cotton wrap. Just be sure to remove the plastic bubble wrap any time the temps rise back up above 33 F. degrees. The above advised action takes a lot of dilligent effort, so if you do not think the tree is worth the trouble, simply remove it, grind the stump and main roots and purchase a 10 to 15 gallon sized, 25 to 30 feet potential height grower Crape Myrtle which has not also already been such drastically top pruned-down by the grower. With any such new CM tree you plant in the area, make certain to plant it far enough from the house to prevent roof damage, and to also prune train it properly each year just as you first described above.

Hey Txmom, I will certainly be willing to look at pictures and see if they allow me to tell you more, but, with what you have already told us, I think I have a pretty good idea of what you are working with. You have three basic choices (or four if you add "do nothing"). The best outcome for the existing crape myrtles would likely result if you waited until late-winter/early-spring next year and cut the entire crape myrtle down to ground level. When you do that, you'll get tons of root suckers popping up mostly right around the stumps. You will need to select the ones you want to keep (that will become the new trunks) and remove the others. This process will be quite a bit of work, because you'll need to remove the extra suckers on a regular basis for at least a few years. After the new trunks start growing to a decent size, you'll need to maintain their height with reduction/drop-crotch pruning. Another possible factor with this method is that many cultivars will produce very floppy new growth and you may have to stake/tie the trunks until they get sufficient caliper to stand on their own. Another solution, which would probably be less work for you both in the short and long run, is to kill the old crape myrtles and replace them with smaller types. If you decide to go with this method, we can discuss the best way to do it. You won't have to worry about all that sucker removal or the long-term continual pruning to try to keep the crapes in check. A third solution, which is probably my least favorite is to try to reduce the number of shoots coming from around the cut on each topped trunk. Eventually, you might get a decent look by doing this and letting time take its course, but the trees wouldn't really look all that good for at least a few years. Also, you'll have the work of continually keeping the new shoots thinned out for a while, possibly having to stake/tie some of the shoots, and having to figure out a way to keep them trimmed to an acceptable size even though they will already be pretty large. I'd vote for doing one of the first two options, but post some pictures if you have them and let us know what option appeals most to you.