I didn’t realise that the Japanese used the real, proper, sensible system.
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The issue is that the new owners have a monopoly position. Un-fettered, they could charge outrageous fees for (“soak the owners” in the parlance of the article) for the use of the access and owners would have little choice but to pay up. Anti-trust laws are designed to keep such arrangements in check (it may even be illegal to hold that monopoly position) but that’s likely a difficult and expensive route to take (see what I did there?).
There will be TONNES (OK, TONS) of case law on monopoly right-of-way issues. This will be resolved one way or another.
An interesting parallel question is perhaps why the city is so financially-illiterate/incompetent/powerless that the $14 fee has not been indexed for inflation such that it represents the true cost of maintaining the facilities in today’s dollars. No wonder we see municipal bankruptcies.
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Someone with better drawing skills than me could draw a San Francisco-centered version of this and title it “BoingBoing editors view of the world”
Well yeah, once they stopped using “reign year.” (I have had occasion to look up Japanese patents.)
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Given that the homeowners almost certainly have an easement I wonder what the owners of the street can do, since they can’t block access to the properties… Sure, they can charge for parking permits and have all non-permitted cars towed. And most of the houses seem to have driveways, so the owners might not need parking spaces. Can they put up obnoxious bill boards? I think the biggest, most “libertarian” thing for them to do would be to auction off parking permits annually. And they could auction off the “hunting licenses” to the tow companies.
In addition, I imagine they can assess some sort of maintenance fee to the property owners for the upkeep of the road and the sidewalks.
Not sure, but I don’t think that the property owner is obliged to maintain the easement of others… They haven’t been maintaining the street for the past two years, I’m not sure why they’d start now. It’s definitely weird in a case like this when the easement itself constitutes the majority of the property. I’m guessing that there is plenty of case-law that covers this situation.
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I used to deal with a system that recorded dates in the dddy format. (Julian date and the last digit of the year)
edited to add. It was from back when computer storage was EXPENSIVE (compared to today) and was for tracking orders that expired after a year. So it was just barely sufficient for the purpose.
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a lot of the questions I had about the issue have been addressed and answered in the posts ITT, but yours seems to be the true crux of the matter, the real puzzle. if it is not a mere clerical error/bureaucratic snafu, then it seems likely that the human factor is probably fairly dramatic.
To some extent, but remember, a homeowner can run for a seat on the HOA board if he wants to keep track of what’s going on. They are usually desperate for members.
The HOA is a legal entity, with insurance, therefore it seems to me they are the culprit here.
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And if that street needs fixing? Suppose a dangerous heave or pothole appears… private or not, as an access for EMS and such, those two owners would be obliged to maintain a certain level of safety there.
The City, as an owner, spends $70,000 to fix, they can go around the area and raise property taxes , or have other ways to absorb that hit.
Private owners, I doubt they are able to monetize their holding to pay for that scale of work.
Someone falls on said street (trespassing probably) you are still on the hook for injuries.
Fun & games until you are hit by a valid lawsuit seeking huge damages.
Anyone who runs a business or owns property or otherwise has a vested interest in looking at them. But you seem determined to be outraged, so if that’s working for you, you just run with that.
And that is an astonishingly acrobatic leap, from the function of a city department to my personal morals! Possibly the most convoluted ad hominem attack I’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving. Kudos!
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I don’t have a horse in this race as I could not even afford to purchase a parking space in San Francisco. I head by the Presidio Terrace on my way to work each day and calling those houses nice is a grotesque understatement. Here’s the first house you see when you enter. In San Francisco, having a road leading to your garage is more ostentatious than having a fountain with a peeing cherub.
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Not ad hominem. Reductio ad absurdum.
I’m trying to pull out of you where and why you draw the line between these cases (the case at hand and the ridiculous examples I gave).
Is it because the HOA are a bunch of rich people? Do you agree with FGD135 that this is about procedures and that the city doesn’t have to do anything more than the bare minimum it is legally obligated to do? For that matter, did the city do even the bare minimum it was legally obligated to do? I suppose that is what the lawsuit will determine.
Would you feel the same if the HOA was instead a poor, distressed, single mother who lost the property her small home was on because she managed to make a “honest” mistake?
People are human. The members of the HOA are human, the city is run by humans. Humans make mistakes. When people are face-to-face they seem to be willing to bridge the gaps created by our conflicting interest. It seems to me that corporations (the HOA and the city) put people into positions where they are best off doing the opposite of what they would do in a simplified situation that involves only two people would do.
There are all sorts of if-onlies, what-ifs, and one example is if a city worker in the tax department had taken literally 10 minutes to try to contact someone. Sure, the HOA made a mistake, but they were trying to screw the city out of the taxes.
I’m not a saint but I do self-reflect about when I see myself drawing my own lines in ways that perhaps reveal things about myself that I’m not proud of.
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The City tried contacting the (former) owners for over 30 years.
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Why not both? The ridiculous examples were certainly reductio ad absurdam, but then impugning my personal morals brings in a lick of ad hominem. If you wanted to know where I would draw the distinction between duty and moral obligation, you could simply ask—with or without irrelevant, absurd analogies.
Why is it that you think the homeowners had no duty to keep their own ducks in a row? Certainly they’re human and humans make mistakes—but different humans have different life experiences. It is reasonable to expect people in multimillion-dollar homes on a private street to have experience with paperwork.
It is absurd to think that a “poor, distressed, single mother” could own property in San Francisco. But that’s a whole different thread!
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You are right, that was a dig I shouldn’t have made.
I don’t think I ever argued that the HOA was not at fault or should pay
something for their failure. Ideally the city, at the time it was prepared
to sell the land, would have put in the bare minimum of effort, perhaps
even hiring a PI to track things down, and then handed the HOA a bill for
the outstanding taxes, plus interest, plus the PI feels, plus I don’t know,
some ridiculous internal labour rate of $100/hr for the extra labour of the
workers. How would that not made the city whole in response to the
failures of the HOA?
Here’s an analogy that isn’t ridiculous. Town of 100 people, farmer John
has what he treats as a single property but is actually two properties
because his brother died and left the other to him. Both farmer John and
the town (Mayor, two councillors, and a clerk on the payroll) failed to
notice that John hadn’t updated the paperwork and that the yearly tax bills
for the other property have been delivered to the abandoned mailbox. The
mailman didn’t notice. No one noticed. Until one date, the clerk
notices. It seems to me I wouldn’t want to live in a place where at that
point the clerk or the Mayor didn’t contact John and he says “oh my goodness
silly me” and they came to an agreement wherein John was given enough time
to pay off the arrears with interest going back and interest going forward
until he was caught up. Even if farmer John were the richest guy in town,
I don’t see a situation where sending yet another letter to the mailbox,
this time informing him that his property was sold, is the right thing to
do.
[edit missing “didn’t”]
Now map this story to the other. Sure, the city doesn’t know everyone in
town like the Mayor and clerk do, but they could certainly behave in a
manner analogously.
It seems everyone accepts that corporations get to act like psychopaths,
but I’d prefer to do whatever I can to move this world closer to one where
people didn’t use corporations as an excuse or a shield for acting like
assholes.
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