When the city "owns" part of your house...

I'll admit that the title of this post is a little bit misleading, but bear with me. One of my neighbors recently finished doing some work on updating his home to make it more livable and more energy efficient. He and his wife (and two children) were able to take advantage of a city program to rehabilitate and improve property owned by lower income families and individuals for things like energy efficiency, accessibility, and habitability. Using this program they were able to get a 0% interest loan (payable on sale or transfer and forgiven after 30 years of occupancy) to improve their basement into living space and blow insulation into their walls. This is a fantastic program by the city to find a way to improve the housing stock of the city, improve the living conditions of people who probably can't afford to update in even basic and worthwhile ways like this, and create incentives for residents to stay in an area, stabilizing neighborhoods. Those are all positive community outcomes. Who could object to better housing stock, more stable neighborhoods and communities, local reinvestment, and improved quality of life for those with lesser means. To me this sounds like a good piece of public policy for the city: relatively affordable, easy to administer, and with high impact on affected properties. 

Enough background. While the city technically has a lien on his house now, as the holder of the secured loan attached to his property, that's not where I was going with this post. That's a standard mortgage/secured transaction issue and not particularly strange or worth commenting on. What was most notable about his improvement process was what he discovered during the permitting process for some of the interior work, especially electrical work, that was required. In Minnesota, there are several kinds of roads, each of which has its own way of being created and required size. The road in question here is a platted town road, specifically McKnight Road. A platted road is a road that has been recorded on a development plat and dedicated to the city or town for public use. It is also given a 66 foot easement (four rods), even though the paved surface of the road may (and likely does) take up far less space. This is to prevent the road from being obstructed, keep view lines clear, facilitate public access, and provide for maintenance strips. These rights of way are usually surveyed precisely based on the Public Land Survey System and recorded with the appropriate state or county office. And here is where the problem came in. Upon first glance, his house looks like almost any other house in the area. It is a similar style, size, and layout. It is situated in a similar place on its lot. But similar is the key.

When the addition that I live in was built in the 1960s, the houses were all variations on a few patterns and the streets were laid out in a similar way. It was all very organized and predictable. Except for my neighbor's house. When they sited his house, they made an error. It isn't noticeable at first, but if you know to look, you can see that it is clearly a few feet closer to McKnight than any other house. Literally all the other houses are set back a few extra feet. This is incredibly important, because those few extra feet put part of his garage, part of two bedrooms, and a tree in the right of way for McKnight. It's still his property, but it is subject to a road easement. This was discovered during the electrical permitting process and was quite a challenge. Few electricians wanted to do any work on a house that was, while privately owned, partially located on a city property interest (an easement is an interest in property, he still owns the land and house, but it is "encumbered" by the rights the city has to maintain the road). It also made it challenging to get a permit, because the city technically had to consent to allowing at least some of the work. Needless to say, it was a bureaucratic nightmare. I don't know how long it took, but they did eventually get a permit, the work was done and inspected, and his house is now much nicer, but it was far more trouble than it should have been. All because someone was a few feet careless fifty years ago.

City easements on private land can also have positive outcomes. The most noticeable of these is seen in the urban forestry departments of most major cities and their planting and maintenance of boulevard trees (those trees, located in the street right of way, in the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the pavement). The land might technically belong to the homeowner (sometimes it doesn't, though there's still a duty to shovel and mow), but the tree is usually city property. Cities are also very particular about what kinds of trees they want to plant, where they would like to plant them, and what size, shape, type, and distribution they are hoping to accomplish. They also concern themselves with creating particular aesthetics in a neighborhood with certain trees, removing trees that are subject to disease, planting trees that thrive in urban environments, and considering things like "messiness" that might accompany fruiting trees or sap shedders. They often come up with comprehensive plans that document strategies, objectives, and schedules that the public can use to understand the system and make requests. All of this to help administer the city's property that might be located on your land.