Are any of them hardcore libertarians? They must be excited to finally be freed of the oppression of state-owned roads and the violence of forced taxation. Now they can finally negotiate to use the sidewalk and road as free entities.
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good. bad. I’m the guy with the gun…
I suspect the good guy might depend on your view…
Do you hate the rich? Bam! It’s the landlords of the street.
Do you hate loopholes? Bam! It’s the owners in their megabazillion dollar houses.
Do you hate the govt? Bam! It’s no one, f’n government gets in the way of land ownership.
Do you hate HOAs? Bam! it’s no one… because those guys are inept and probably don’t buy vegan dogs at the yearly homeowner bbq and EVERYONE is suffering.
This does seem like an article of loopholes and those that take advantage of. The victims just happen to be uber rich so it hits a grey area for us normal folk.
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If only there was some sort of … I dunno … legal fiction that everyone belonged to so that we could share this load together.
OH WELL
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Interesting.
If an old woman was walking across the street and fell and you saw it happen, because it is not your job to pick her up then I expect you won’t pick her up.
If I were walking down the street behind you, and your wallet fell out of your pocket, because it isn’t my job to tell you, I shouldn’t bother telling you that you dropped it.
If you went to a convenience store and paid $10 for and $2 item and the clerk accidentally put in $20 and gave you $18 in change, it’s not your job to correct her, so when she is short 2 hours of wage and the boss deducts if from her paycheck, sucks to be her, huh?
You have interesting morals.
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Should I try that approach the next time one of my clients doesn’t make payroll tax deposits on time?
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So does SF’s tax bureaucracy. Not that that surprises me much.
Perhaps there was dick move by the previous accountants? If the city kept sending notices, what were the previous accountants doing with them?
- Return to sender?
- Forwarding to the HOA or new accountants with a note to update the city?
- Sooner or later, giving up and tossing them in the garbage?
- Very slow revenge?
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Pretty sure the HOA owes a stack of $14 bills plus the one they’re gonna owe this year to the Chengs. Who will eventually make book when everybody teleports everywhere and a house isn’t a house until it’s a low-set oval (except the one ca. Cupertino.)
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Well, it’s a gated community, so they knew they owned the street - or thought they did, anyways. Surprise!
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Déjà vu!
In the 1980s we were notified by our county that our cul de sac was being auctioned off for failure to pay back taxes. We had no Home Owner’s Association, we didn’t even know the cul de sac wasn’t a public street, and that it was actually still private property owned by the builder of our neighborhood. The person at the county warned us this exact situation could happen, that there were unscrupulous real estate swindlers who read all the notices in the newspapers in order to commit these shenanigans. However, our county’s policy is to contact the homeowners and give them the first opportunity to buy the land for the amount of back taxes. (Apparently there are a lot of builders who mess this up.)
The only differences between these people and us are:
- Their houses are worth millions; ours are “starter homes” and worth far less.
- The city did not give them good faith notification; but our county did.
We tried to give the land to our city so they would maintain the road for us, but the road wasn’t up to city code so they refused to take it. Instead, the nice county lady divided the street up into equal shares owned by each lot, so our street taxes are now a part of our property taxes. We ended up forming an HOA in order to pay for plowing, insurance, and maintenance.
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I never said the city was wholly responsible, there is some responsibility that lies with the homeowners.
That said, if the new accountant never received the bill to begin with then how would they notice it was missing?
I would expect the city to take some reasonable action to attempt notification prior to a sale. The time when it was reasonable to expect a notice in the paper would serve to adequately notify residents of issues they may have an interest in is long gone. A mailer to each affected address would have been quite adequate to effect notification. It would also be quite reasonable to roll the cost of this into a late fine to be paid by the HOA or added onto the minimum bid for the auction. As it is the city failed it’s residents. It doesn’t matter what their property value is, what matters is that the city through inaction and laziness has allowed their residents to be preyed upon.
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That’s some pretty good victim blaming you’ve got going on there.
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The City did.
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We’re gonna have to disagree on what constitutes reasonable then.
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Boohoo. The City did exactly what they’re legally required to do. You’re also conveniently ignoring the fact the residents failed to pay their $14 tax for over 30 years. The City’s been quite reasonable, and patient.
I’m not sure what more you expect from the City, because anything beyond what the City did was the responsibility of the street’s now-former owners. The reason the legal boundary exists is to clearly define and delineate the responsibilities so you can’t simultaneously claim ownership and shirk the associated responsibilities therein.
You can cry and complain and claim it’s unfair, but you can’t have it both ways.
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The speculators could be coining it in by renting out the parking space to people living in their cars.
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I think even the British’ve given up on that one, to the extent they use the word at all. We’re much too focused on preserving the one true day-month-year ordering.
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As much as I’d like to Schadenfreude here (OK… just a little… mmmm, OK), property speculators are really the worst. Regress out that the neighborhood is probably full of rich assholes, the speculator’s actions are just symptoms of the same sickness inherent in both a dysfunctional system and greedy people all too common in SF and other hot real-estate markets.
The city should just reclaim the street for the public, maybe even turn the sidewalks into public space or something else for the common good.
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This isn’t about morals. This is about procedures.
As to the examples you give: as such, no argument.
In this context: apples and sea cucumbers.
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Not at all.
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