A 25-Inch Plot of Land in Greenwich Village Embodied ‘a Resistance’ | Hacker News Reader

A 25-Inch Plot of Land in Greenwich Village Embodied ‘a Resistance’

nytimes.com

61 pointspseudolus27 comments

I thought it was weird to give the size of a plot in units of length. That made me click the title. If it had said "270 square inch plot" I probably would not have been curious enough to follow the link.

So, I claim the title is click-bait. :)

I’m glad you put the smiley at the end there because HN is infested with people crying clickbait for merely interesting or articles they disagree with.

Clickbait is HN’s ‘FUD’.

There’s been an overreaction to a real issue and I just wanted to add my worthless opinion.

I simply assumed the writer inadvertently left out the word "square". Apparently, the omission was a deliberate nudge to Hiring at any other publication with laxer standards.

No, it's not just an omission of square: the plot in question is a little triangle, each side around 25 inches long, so the area is around 270 sq in.

Indeed: The abbreviation "sq" indicating area.

I know the NYTimes thinks its charming, but this plaque embodies the arrogance and greed of wealthy landowners in NY who have opposed the construction of mass transit for over a hundred years.

Was it the mass transit they opposed, or the condemnation of property for an avenue above the subway?

The article makes it sound like the problem was the buildings were demolished so they could construct a cut and cover subway under them. Then buildings were built over the subway--a smoke shop now occupies the space where the original building stood. The tiny parcel is the result of a survey error.

Plenty of people fight against violent confiscation of private land. You don't have to be arrogant or greedy to resist.

There is no private land in the United States that was not confiscated either by direct violence or through the threat of violence.

In fact, private land can only exist thanks to the threat of violence against those who would use it outside of the "owner's" intent.

> In fact, private land can only exist thanks to the threat of violence against those who would use it outside of the "owner's" intent.

Kinda like what makes your wallet 'yours'.

Exactly.

The key difference, though, is that my wallet is unlikely to be directly useful for the creation of a public good. Some portion of the contents are frequently used to that end though.

"There is no private land in the United States that was not confiscated either by direct violence or through the threat of violence."

I hardly think the United States in unique in that respect - just that it perhaps happened more recently than a lot of other places.

Wasn’t Manhattan purchased peacefully from the natives?

All (admittedly cursory) evidence points to:

- Purchased from a tribe that didn't have credible control over the area

followed by

- 20 years of skirmishes/wars with the tribe that actually controlled the area.

Since we aren't really discussing anything in this part of the thread and merely advocating viewpoints on the subject...

Every year I give financial support to civil liberty organizations such as the Institute for Justice (https://ij.org) and the Pacific Legal Foundation (https://pacificlegal.org). Because, after you demonize certain people as a justification for treating them any way you want, you find some of them aren't really that bad and are just trying to protect what they worked hard to get in the first place.

So, rather than try to fire up the mobs with appeals to emotion, I'd much rather fund those organizations which are fighting for individual rights in the courts and with the law.

Was violence actually used, or is this "violence" meaning "anything the government does that someone doesn't like"?

No, it doesn't.

> And then a surveyor made a mistake. Somehow, after the distances and angles were calculated and recorded on the tax roll, the Voorhis lot did not disappear completely, as the city expected it to. The tiny triangle survived.

> “Some versions of the story say it was overlooked by the city,” Mr. Berman said. “Others say the Hess estate refused to give up the property from the beginning. From most of the writing I’ve seen about it, it seems that it was a mistake on the city’s part that the city tried to correct” by asking the Hesses simply to donate the triangle.

The plaque embodies a surveyor's mistake. The plot is what remains after the city already took the land for public purposes. It's existence has not affected mass transit at all.

Yep. In a hundred more years there'll be a tear-jerking piece about how NIMBYs in SF resisted new housing being built.

This article gave me an idea. We've all read about neighborhoods being "gentrified", raising the property taxes, effectively pricing the original habitants out. I've wondered, if this ever happened to me, how could I solve the problem. Some kind of "poison pill", making the land useless to anyone else. Perhaps the solution is dividing the property and carving out a small 1 square foot section somewhere important on the property, so its land value is low enough to where anyone can afford the property taxes on it. That way, even if you're forced to sell the land, there's this little part they can't take from you that makes the rest of the land useless.

I'm sure someone else has thought of this... anyone know of something like this, or other solutions to this problem?

It would vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally you can't just carve up a lot willy-nilly. In order to transfer ownership of a lot, a deed must be recorded with the relevant government agency (city, county, etc.). These agencies generally have plat books recording the location and coordinates of lots so that this transfer can take place without having to send a surveyor out each time there's a transfer, and there are rules and procedures regarding how lots are recorded, modified, and updated.

Not only that. There’s usually development regulations for ‘sub divisions’ that specify minimum things like street access, utilities, etc.

Property taxes can’t really do this if you own the property. Worst case take out an extra mortgage to pay taxes and you can stay on the same land for another 30 years without paying anything else out of pocket.

Hypothetically, you can afford to pay taxes on a 100k property and it bumps to 1 million. Well now you have 900k worth of equity to pay the difference.

Is your plan to die before the equity runs out?

A 30 year mortgage won't cover itself more than 15 years or so because you have to pay interest. Add to that the tax you already can't afford and all you've done is trade your property for 10 years of renting it from the bank.

Unless you have some external income or personal budget to cut so as to cover the difference then taxes can absolutely force you from a property you own.

You don’t need all the money up front, only 0.6% or so. Inflation is likely also increasing your equity especially on these time frames.

Look into Reverse mortgage to check the math. But, again this is not the full property tax rate just the percentage you can’t afford based on an increase in value.

So, sell and make a lot of money today, or stay for another 30 ish years really seems to cover just about everyone.

Gentrification is bad for local renters, but generally doesn't hurt the property owners, who have property that is appreciating in value. You can live there, or sell up and live a more luxurious lifestyle somewhere else. The increase in property tax won't come anywhere near cancelling out the increased equity - at worst, you could take out a line of credit on the property and pay the property taxes with that.

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