STORIES

PROPERTY MATTERS contains almost 100 anecdotes about specific situations and people. Here are a few of them:

FREDONIA, ARIZONA, 1994

Fredonia is a town of 1,200 people north of the Grand Canyon, about four miles south of the Utah border. Settled in 1885 by Mormons, it has always been a timber town, processing the trees harvested in the nearby Kaibob National Forest. Such symbiosis between federal land and private labor and enterprise is a common pattern in Arizona, where 47% of the land, and a higher proportion of the valuable natural resources, belong to the federal government. Indeed, it is the pattern throughout the West.

Now, Bruce Whiting is telling his employees that the family sawmill, started 50 years ago and the last one in town, must close. The loggers and mill workers are out of luck. Regulations protecting the northern goshawk and the Mexican spotted owl and a string of environmentalist lawsuits against the U.S. Forest Service timber sale plans have ended government sales. The mill has nothing to cut, and without the Kaibob wood, it has no prospects. On the videotape, you see that Whiting is not crying, barely. He says:

"You know, there's lots of words and emotions that have have been going through my mind the last few days and weeks. Some of these are, unfortunately, anger, disappointment, frustration -- trying to figure out was there any way not to make this decision. . . . . Its the hardest decision my Dad and I ever made. . . . . I can't think of anything we did wrong. We had good employees, we have a good product, we gave good service, . . . we did everything that you learn you're supposed to do in school. . . . And not one time did anyone ever say to me, your government might put you out of business because they don't like your industry any more. And that's just what's happened. We did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. . . . We have the best employees anywhere. . . . . Fredonia is a model operation. . . . Our management has lobbied, we have tried to pass legislation, we have filed lawsuits, we have defended lawsuits, all thinking that, no, reason will prevail. Rationality will prevail. Rational people will understand that what's good for people, what's good for communities, what's good for forests is the right thing to do. Well, there are people who, I guess, are not rational or reasonable. Most of the people who made the decision I don't think have ever worked a day in their lives. They don't go to work and they don't get sweaty and they don't get bloody and they probably don't shed tears either.

"Its not fair to you, and its not fair to your families, and its not fair to Fredonia and Kanab and the other communities. Its not fair to the citizens of the United States. Its not fair to that forest for us not to be up there and to let it just sit there and probably burn or rot."

BUFFALO, NEW YORK, 1996

A small college in Buffalo buys an old rectory, planning to raze it to create room for parking. Community groups petition the city to designate the building as a landmark, and thus untouchable. The preservation board recommends denial of the petition, but is over-ruled by the Buffalo City Council. The rectory assumes landmark status. The College asks for compensation on the ground that the city has taken its property and must, under the Constitution, pay for it. The city refuses, and the court upholds the denial on the grounds that under the applicable legal criteria the property is not "taken," even if it is now worthless to the college. The local groups now have the benefit of the use (or non-use) of the land without the inconvenience of paying for it, and the college now owns a certified white elephant.

PACIFIC GROVE, CALIFORNIA, 1991-1994

The owner of a 1.1 acre lot on the Monterey Peninsula wants to build a house. Getting approval of the plans requires twenty public hearings and the approval of the Architectural Review Board, the Planning Commission, the City Council, and the California Coastal Commission. The process takes three and a half years and costs over $600,000 for carrying costs, lawyers, and studies. During one hearing, an Architectural Review Board member says: "In my former life as a seagull, I was flying up and down the California coastline and saw your house built shaped as a seashell." She votes against approving the plans for a non-seashell-shaped house.

CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA, 1995

Richard Ehrlich owns the site of a former private tennis club that went belly up economically. He wants to build thirty townhouses. At first the city says "no." Period. Once a site is used for recreation, only other recreational uses are allowed. After a round of threats and fights, the city says he can build if he pays a $280,000 "mitigation fee" to compensate the city for the loss of recreational facilities, a $30,000 "park fee," and a $33,220 "art fee" to buy public art to be displayed on Ehrlich's property. The California courts uphold the exactions. Thereafter, the U.S. Supreme Court decides an important case on the topic, and Ehrlich's case is now being reconsidered. Preliminary indications are that he will lose again.

NEW YORK CITY, 1943-1995

In 1983, Joan Dawson buys a three-unit brownstone in Harlem. She moves in with her two grown children, two foster children, and a grandchild. Two of the units are renter-occupied and covered by rent control, but the law allows an owner to take over an apartment for family use. This is what Dawson plans. In 1984, the city changes the law so that tenants who have lived in an apartment for twenty years cannot be evicted under the owner-occupancy clause.

Dawson sues, arguing that the change in the law took her property. She loses. The court notes that she should have known better than to rely on existing law since laws can always be changed. In 1994 she more or less buys her house again, paying the tenants to leave.

WASHINGTON, D.C. 1992

A twenty-two-year-old soldier is driving his Honda in downtown Washington. He is waved to the curb by a woman. Actually, it is a male police officer in drag: over six feet tall, 220 pounds, dressed in a black dress, red wig and red flats. The cop says the soldier said he was looking for a date. The soldier says that the cop offered him sexual services for twenty dollars, that he responded, "Yeah, okay," and then drove away. He was stopped by other police and arrested. The police drop the charge of solicitation of prostitution, for unexplained reasons, but they keep the car, arguing that it is forfeit under a recent law providing for seizure of vehicles used to solicit prostitution. The "Yeah, okay" (which some of us might interpret as the equivalent of "Riiiiiight!) is enough to establish probable cause that an offense was committed. Probable cause is all that is needed to justify the forfeiture. On the night that the law went into effect in D.C. the police seized three cars and a mountain bike.

As a general rule, a law enforcement agency gets to keep a large portion of forfeited property for their own use. Sometimes this principle gets extended even furthrer. In 1993, members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were convicted of falsifying reports to show probable cause for seizures of cash and of stealing about $60 million.