Is this, perhaps, the real source of the problem? If this is a law that has been routinely ignored in the recent past (I don’t know, this is just a ‘suppose it’s so for the sake of discussion’) and now they need more revenue and are looking at how they can generate it, I can see why people would be upset, law or no. It’s changing the rules in the middle of the game.

“The city is asking for trouble when it values ticketing income more than the Good Will of its citizens…”

Susan Lee, I love your comment.

And you’re telling me “nice try”, as if I’m the crook here?

My property IS my possession. Or, if it is not in my possession, it is not my property. So, as John here, I too am curious, what is the ruling document here – is it a house deed, that describes, on the basis of land survey, the borders of the property that is sold to a homeowner – or city ordinances nobody heard about and nobody was warned against at the closing or before it?
I don’t see much difference, in principle, if a city decides to fine a resident for not maintaining the sidewalk (despite said resident paying property taxes for city services, including street maintenance) – and a city prohibiting people to park in their own driveways. In both cases it is destruction of private property.

It didn’t seem to me that I actually owned anything. I had no control over how the property was used, maintained, or modified, and I paid rent to the county and state in the form of property taxes. I honestly felt a little like a fraud when I sold it.

I still “own” a house, but it is in a semi-rural area where most people still have an old fashioned idea of ownership rather than a technical one, but I can see that is already changing. The big question in my mind is whether there will be any perceived value left for me to sell or if everyone else will have figured out that there’s no benefit… so, honestly, what do I technically own?

Thanks.

John

As there were several elm trees on the city’s part of ‘my land’, I was particularly interested in who was responsible for the health of those trees, especially given the fact of Dutch Elm Blight. To my non-surprise, I was.

As this was a corner lot, we had a lot of foot traffic taking a shortcut across the diagonal. We resolved that with a $5K hedge. Now, someone could have insisted on forcing his way through the hedge and there’d have been sod all we could have done about it, but we made it just inconvenient enough to make it not worth anyone’s while. We did not have to get city permission to put in the hedge, though they would have insisted on a say about a fence, particular as this was in a historic neighborhood. We put in 5-ft hedges. Those hedges–with a new owner–are not around 15-feet tall.

Far more odious–and insidious–was our experience when we went to rent the property when I received a new overseas assignment from USIA. A couple rented the house. It turned out that she was a DC gov’t attorney and he worked for the Rental Accommodation Board–which oversees owner/tenant law. After signing the lease, they had the house inspected and found 23 safety violations, ranging from a cracked window, a missing cabinet pull, and a cracked sidewalk (city-owned). They threatened to have the house condemned if these issues were immediately rectified. I will generously assume that they were on the lookout for slum lords, but this house was pretty far removed from a slum–though geographically, perhaps not so much.

It took $800 to fix everything, all in one week. They then asked to be permitted to get out of the two-year lease. Not a chance in hell were they going to get out of the lease.

At the end of the lease, it turned out that they had fraudulently applied in the first place. They had applied as a couple, but brought along two minor children who should have been declared on the lease application. They didn’t destroy the house, but the surely did not leave it in the condition in which they found it, minus wear-and-tear.

I used to work at a chemical plant where the workers were lackadaisical about following directions, including written procedures and even safety rules. The owners told me that they wanted to change the culture. I suggested that they start by, themselves, not smoking in “no smoking” areas. Take down all the “no smoking” signs, I told them, and put them back up only in areas where you really mean it. Then you observe them too. I might as well have been speaking Japanese as far as their understanding what I was telling them or it making any sense. No, the culture did not change.

Susan Lee

Not parking on your driveway in front of your house is weird, though. And I don’t think it’s reasonable that people should not complain b/c they could have out that that is the case before they bought the house. Remember the hullabaloo when it was discovered that one of the Bushes’ property deeds had the clause that the property could not be sold to a nonwhite person? That’s a pretty common clause on a lot of deeds, unfortunately, but it is widely ignored and would not be legally defensible if anyone tried to invoke it. It’s there b/c people don’t read those things and don’t know it’s there, or know and figure it’s widely ignored, and so have not bothered to go to the trouble of removing it.

As I said above, I know of many communities that have similar rules, some via CC&Rs, other by ordinance. Whether or not they are reasonable is a question of context that may depend on various factors like lot sizes and street widths.

No, I did not say that. In our city, the city has a right of way that is 80 feet on either side of the centerline of the street. Our house is setback almost 120 feet from that, so we have a large front lawn. The street is about 20 feet on either side of the centerline. The city paves and maintains the street from its general funds.

The city also uses the right of way for a side-walk. Between the side-walk and the street there is a lawn with trees on it, which is part of the right of way. The trees belong to the city and they take care of them. One of ours (one of the ones in front of our house more correctly) is dead, and the city has written us a letter stating that they know it is dead and promising that they will remove and replace it soon. The letter also said that if we sent them $200 they would give us a nicer tree. We went for that. On the other hand we mow and take care of the tree lawn.

Does the city own the right of way? Yes, sort of, they can use it for the intended purpose, they could not put houses on it. Do we have rights in the portion of the right of way between the front of our lot. Yes. If the city were to abandon the right of way, it would revert to my wife. We hope that the city does not do that, because that would adversely affect the value of our property.

“Let them, then, maintain it, clean it, seed-n-weed the lawns, rake the leaves and shovel the snow. … Then it’s a city’s responsibility, if a land goes to weed.”

Nice try. But it doesn’t work that way.

“In your defense of the municipalities you forgot one thing: homeowners already pay to the city for all the services it provides (or not) – it’s called property tax.”

First, yes we pay property tax, that too is an encumbrance on urban property. Second. I did not, nor will defend cities, but I am happy to try to explain them. Do they spend the money wisely? No. But, they are doing a much better job than Congress.

I understand the concept that one seldom owns one own land absolutely. For example, in Texas there are automatic easements on all bodies of water. You cannot fence within the bank of any river or creek even if your property line is established by the body of water. Neither can you claim trespass if someone enters your land by water. These are all traditional means of dealing with the realities poised by every shifting water and the historical uncertainties of water travel.

Even more t0 the point, many older neighborhoods still have a patch of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. Technically, the sidewalk to the street sets in an easement and the homeowner can’t do anything that would block the sidewalk.

Other restriction require you to maintain your property in a safe manner that the property and safety of others is not threatened. For example, the restriction against weeds is not for atheistic reasons but prevent the spread of rats.

However, I am at a lost to think of any circumstance in common law that (1) defines as public space what is obviously a private space i.e. someone’s front yard. Does that mean that no one in Washington D.C. as the right to order someone off their front lawn? Do people have the same rights of passage through people’s front yard as they do the sidewalk? (2) Requires the property owner to maintain the public space at their own individual cost.

I would be interested to learn the history of Washington D.C. laws. Knowing them, it dates back to some racial restriction.

I suppose that my perceptions have been shaped by a life in the west in which public and private are fairly cleanly separated. The idea that you have to call a lawyer to know where to park your car in your own driveway is a completely alien thought to me.

In your defense of the municipalities you forgot one thing: homeowners already pay to the city for all the services it provides (or not) – it’s called property tax.

The existence of a municipal corporation is an encumbrance on the land within the corporate limits. Every lot owner is subject to the easements and ordinances in favor of the city.

For example, the house I live in (owned by my wife, who magnanimously allows me to stay here), is on plated land within a municipality. She does not own the land within 80 feet of the center line of the street in front of the house. If the city abandons that street the right of way will revert to her, but she would loose a lot of value, because we would have to pack-out to get to food and supplies. so there is a trade off between ownership and value.

Similarly, there is a local ordinance against allowing land to go to weeds. Not only is there an aesthetic value to the ordinance, but there are mutual benefits to house owners who have less weeding to do in their gardens.

I have no familiarity with the Washington DC ordinance cited by the op, but it seems to me to be broadly similar to others I have heard of that restrict street or yard parking. Similar restrictions are also found in the CC&Rs (covenants, conditions, and restrictions) of suburban developments.

To be fair, I have never heard of a justification for ordinances that claims a possessory interest in the affected land, but I think the theoretical justification is less important than the practical result.

The punch line is that the city is an encumbrance on the land inside its boundaries. If you think that the services and proximity of the city don’t justify the weight of the encumbrance, sell your land and move.

I think the problem is that people don’t actually know that the property laws in D.C. are so radically different from the rest of the country as well as common law. Anglospheric law is based on the concept of constancy enforced by precedence. Having a jurisdiction in which people suddenly do not own their own drive ways and front yards is such a radical change that it should be posted on signs. It also appears that the city never enforced its easement until recently raising the very real possibility that the law has lapsed due to a massive and constant lack of enforcement.

More to the point, this reveals a mindset in which citizens are the property of the state to be milked for benefit of the political class.

Now, you can argue that it’s unfair that you have to take care of property abutting your own which you do not own. Perhaps so. If that’s the case, then you probably should buy property in those parts of DC. But it’s not as though this is some sneaky-pete skulduggery on the part of DC government. It’s right there for all to discover before you buy the property and has been for something like 200 years.

This law can have some beneficial effects, too. If, for instance, a water or sewer pipe breaks outside the walls of your deeded property, it’s up to the District to fix it, not the homeowner: he’s responsible only for what’s inside the walls and under his floor.

It can be tedious, however, when a tree on district-owned property that surrounds your home is breaking a retaining wall (District-owned), but you can’t get permission to remove the tree and will have to pay to replace the retaining wall once it collapses. Life ain’t fair, I guess.

But really, if you don’t like the property laws, then don’t buy property there. Or if you must, then get the law changed if you don’t like it.

And yes, most DC gov’t employees are muttonheads.