Note that the new owners are not threatening to cut off access to the houses. I'm pretty sure that would be illegal. They are merely threatening to charge for parking. Parking space is valuable and something people should pay for.
Edit: I also want to say that having your property auctioned off after you fail to pay property taxes for thirty years is hardly a "technicality."
The expectation that parking should be cheap or free is bizarre when you take a step back and think about it. I don't expect the government to provide massively subsidized self-storage spaces, yet I do expect massively subsidized places to store my private vehicle.
Because presumably, your tax money is already paying for it.
Free use of government property is a great thing when it's a public good, but parking is not one of those situations.
I don't expect private cars to ever disappear, but starting to line up the economic incentives to to disincentivize private car use makes a lot of sense if we're really serious about addressing global warming.
If tax money built the parking spot and tax money maintains the parking spot, then why should the government get extra income from the parking spot? Is my tax burden alleviated when I pay to use this parking spot?
It's not a matter of alleviating your tax burden, it's a matter of alleviating everyone else's tax burden so they're not subsidizing your car. You should pay for what you use unless there's a compelling reason for it to be subsidized, not the other way around. Roads are essential for freedom of movement and in any case are too difficult to toll on a massive scale, so it makes sense to subsidize them. Parking spaces are inessential and easy to charge for, so we should charge for them.
Paying to store your car is not a "tax" so it cannot result in being double-taxed. It's a standard payment in exchange for use of property.
Besides, last time I was in SF I didn't see any free parking. It was all meters and expensive garages.
Free parking is rare in SF, which makes it all the more unusual that the people on this street had it for thirty years because they didn't pay their taxes for it.
Gonna need to provide some sources if you want to claim that public parking doesn't benefit society.
But parking at home? There's a straight line connection between the car owner who uses the space and the cost of the space. I shouldn't expect the government to pay for my parking any more than I should expect the government to pay for my house. In fact, paying for people's houses would be a lot more reasonable, since people need housing, but don't need parking.
I can't come up with any such counterarguments for public parking. It doesn't benefit non-drivers in any way, and the people it does benefit mostly don't need public assistance.
Edit: who pays majority of taxes for road use? It's car owners. You have cheap buses only because car owners paid majority of the bills for road network maintenance and development.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_transit_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://taxfoundation.org/state-gasoline-tax-rates-2017/
Gas taxes don't cover all road expenses. I looked at Virginia's data (since that's where I live) and nearly as much road construction/maintenance money comes from normal sales taxes as comes from gas taxes. Another substantial chunk comes from the Federal government, and the Feds pay out substantially more than they receive from the Federal gas tax.
$600/year to maintain ~200ft^2 of road seems relatively reasonable to me.
I've heard it said, although I can't find a cite right now, that the construction of an underground parking complex may cost $40,000 per space. You can see how that sort of thing would push the average up a lot.
You can also adjust "annualized costs" a lot by changing assumptions about useful lifetime. In practice, many American suburban parking lots are maintained very poorly and probably come out very cheap per space.
The PDF linked from the article does show more detail than the $600/year figure. While some categories cost a little less than $600/year, several categories cost a lot more, so the average gets up there even though the expensive kinds are rarer.
http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_cost_of_a_parking_...
Which is basically property ownership/landlordship in a nutshell. Not that I'm disagreeing with you, just pointing out it's something we accept all the time already.
Like everything else, there's a spectrum, and I find the couple described in the article to be on the extreme "slumlord" end, except even more obnoxious because they are masquerading as nice gentle good samaritans.
In fact, they already did, by paying the debts of the property.
All of this was triggered by some super-mega-rich people not paying taxes for ~30 years, which after all this time amounted to a grand total of $900. After ample warning, the street was put up for auction and was bought by someone.
This whole situation could've been headed off at the pass several times: by paying the owed taxes at any point or by outbidding everyone at the auction as a last resort. But they took the "do nothing" route - maybe because they thought they could get away with it? - and got punished for it.
No sympathy from me. We all have obligations, and I get no shred of sympathy from my government when I fail to meet them (they slapped a €20 administrative fee on top of an unpaid €0,20 fine when they mailed the notification to me, just so you can get an idea... that 100x the cost of the fine in "administrative fees").
Why should they get anything more or less than what the average citizen gets?
Still, I don't have much sympathy. You'd think someone at some point in the 30 years they weren't paying taxes would have said, hey, you know, we haven't paid property taxes for the street in quite a while, maybe we should see what's going on with that.
If I had some problem stemming from failing to pay taxes for three decades, I doubt I'd be treated nicely either.
You might argue that the street was always privately owned. But if the parking fees had existed when the residents were searching for a home, they could have factored them into the price, and if the result was too high, they could have easily picked another offer. Thus the parking fees would have effectively been part of a competitive market for housing. However, now that they already live there, moving out would have a significant financial and psychic cost. The limit on the price the couple can get away with charging is set by that (along with, of course, the perceived cost of alternate parking arrangements, again both financial and psychic) - not by anything related to the market value of the land they own.
Yeah, it sucks that they've lost something they assumed they'd have forever when they purchased their property. But that's why you need to make sure that the HOA is in good shape when you buy a house that has one. Apparently nobody noticed, for thirty years, that the HOA wasn't paying taxes on its property, or that the wrong address was listed for it. Did they never have an internal audit?
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hQNIidI...
While I'd like to assume the new owners researched the deed before purchasing, I get this feeling they didn't since it was an auction and simply saw an opportunity to take advantage of wealthy people. My question is, why didn't the city just convert it into a public road?
https://sf.curbed.com/2015/10/14/9911570/unicorn-alert-san-francisco-driveway-for-sale-asks-50k
The laws of easements and adverse possession are highly fact based so it's not worth opining on this case without more facts. But the takeaway is that you _always_ want to have an explicit agreement with people who are using your land, and ideally you want them to pay an annual rent that you enforce, even if it's a token sum of $1.[1] Once you allow people to use your property without an explicit agreement, you open the door to either outright losing your property or losing the ability to control your property.
This is a good thing because, on balance, if somebody willingly sits on their rights for a long period of time it's better that he lose out rather than permit him to, out of the blue, disrupt the settled expectations of everybody else. But it does mean that as a property owner you have to remain at least minimally vigilant.
That's why these streets sell for such little money. If the ability to monetize ownership of these private streets were clear cut, you can bet that they would sell for much more at auction. I doubt this couple were the only speculators who saw this opportunity.
[1] Don't think of paying a token sum as a pointless ritual. In the eyes the law, the regular exchange is objective evidence of the existence of the contract and its continuation.
Adverse possession seems to require an element of you know, possession. No one possessed this property except the HOA until the nice couple bought it, and then their ownership has been the opposite of notorious because they didn't want to come into the light until they had their legal ducks in a row. If the couple had been paying the taxes for the last 30 years it might come under adverse possession. If this goes in favor of the couple without limit to whatever they want to do, it would be because the auction is unreservedly upheld. I basically agree that there is some chance that at least an easement will be found to exist in favor of the HOA. The tax collector did sit on their rights to the detriment of all, including a bit of degradation of the already weak reputation of tax collectors.
My question is, why didn't the city just convert it into a
public road?
A couple things to note:
(1) if the couple does win, then it only bolsters someone else's case to do something similar elsewhere. When it happens in a poor neighborhood and people are up in arms, guess which case will get cited.
(2) there's no way in hell this is going to stand. there are probably mistakes that were made in not notifying all the homeowners of the sale. the homeowners are too rich and too powerful to not find some kind of loop hole.
(3) that couple is in for a world of legal hurt. if they choose to fight they're going to rack up a shit load of legal bills. it's them vs 40 rich people. yes, $90k for the street and $5M in future legal bills. even if they win, they'll be buried in legal bills. And then when they do try to collect parking fees, the homeowners are going to hassle them for every dime. if the couple thinks the homeowners are just going to roll over and merrily pay them any amount of money for parking, they are sorely mistaken.
This isn't "be careful what you wish for, it might happen to poor people too." This is, "some rich people finally get the tiniest taste of what life is like when the entire system isn't rigged in your favor."
There are 40 homeowners who would rather drag that couple through legal hell out of spite than pay a $1 parking fee. And they have the wherewithal in spades to do it.
Even if the couple gets passed all that, the homeowners are going to complain about every little thing. Crack in street? Fix it. Curb crooked? Fix it. Someone illegally parked? Deal with it now. Trash on street? Clean it. Leaves on street? Sweep it now. Grass too long? Mow it immediately. Don't answers these calls immediately? Get accused of negligent landlord.
If the couple thought they could just kick their feet back and collect checks... I just don't know what to say...
Why pay lawyers here? Spite?
If I thought I could successfully "flip" it for, say $500K, which is pocket change for the affected people in that neighborhood, then sure, $190K would be a bargain. And if the 40 property owners could kick in $20K each to sue the investor, surely they'd rather kick in $10K each to buy the street back instead.
I agree, but it's hard to feel bad for the residents of that neighborhood. They're just getting taste of the type of crap that the lower and middle classes deal with every day.