Highest and Best Use

Oh, woe is this friggin' world.  Not me, just the world.  Not even me in this world.  If it was me in this world that we were talking about, I would write, "Oh, hmm is me."  These days, I'm just wondering how it all keeps spinning.  And since the sun continues to rise over my sleeping eyes every morning around 6, I shouldn't really wonder about the spinning part as much as the other, less important stuff, like financial stability and quality of life.

I read two articles out of the New York Times today and then closed the browser, deciding that none of the other news fit to print was worthy of a read after the messages conveyed in those two timely gems.

I read this one first: Kindness of a Stranger Still Resonates.  In the midst of the Great Depression, an era so precisely named that no one wants to try it on again despite its possible fit, a Jewish refugee from Romania who'd made a small personal fortune in clothing decided to share a bit of it to those less fortunate.  He placed an ad in the local paper offering cash help in terrible times in exchange for brief letters describing the need.  People wrote about their inability to provide food or clothing for their families.  He made about 150 anonymous gifts in response to the letters he received, most for as little as $5.  He promised that no one would ever know about his generosity, confirming that he would hold the names of everyone who wrote to him in confidence until "the very end."

The other article was At Legal Fringe, Empty Houses Go To the Needy.  It highlights the forward thinking move of a born-again Christian dude in Florida who found an old law permitting adverse possession of unclaimed real property and decided to pursue it to the benefit of homeless families in North Lauderdale.  He's now being charged with fraud for accepting rent on properties he doesn't own and is facing up to 15 years in prison.  The rent he charged was well below market rate and often involved maintenance to the abandoned and deteriorating houses in lieu of dollars.  He thought it made sense to get folks into the properties and made sure to send letters to each of the banks and owners of record of the 20 properties he claimed, notifying them of his intentions.  He only got one response.  The authorities wish to remind us that his acts, while possibly honorable, also constitute trespassing.  The Floridian Robin Hood makes no claim to perfect charity.  He simply wanted to find an honest way to make a living while he helped some people out.  He even told his tenants that he didn't own the properties and contacted them when he was arrested to advise that they stop paying any rent to him.

Somewhere, in the gulf of time separating these two stories, the narrow, ruddy path of self-sufficiency and personal honor has been lost to the overgrowth of large, powerful, moneyed interests.  Adverse possession is one of the few, fine property law concepts I remember well from law school (with my sincere apologies to Professor J. Doobie aka Dobey aka Dobris).  It's a process that allows ownership of unused, unattended property to be placed into the hands of someone who has committed to tending the land in the manner of an owner, in the absence of the true owner.  Call it squatters' rights.

The concept made perfect sense to me in law school (although not in the precise terms that would have allowed me to answer Dobey's persistent queries on the subject).   If the true owner ain't around to claim the place, and someone moves on in to make a house a home, then then after a period of years, the new guy should win the prize-- ownership!  To accumulate points toward the prize over the years, the new guy would have been paying taxes, utilities, mowing the lawn, placing a hand-carved, rustic wooden mailbox he bought at the fair with his name engraved on the side.  Everyone knew he was there, enjoyed his monthly potlucks and good neighbor plates of Christmas cookies.   The new guy put the house to its highest and best use, which ultimately, I think, is the point of property law.  Thus, he can keep it.

These days, we get someone looking to put some houses to use, and to put some people who need houses into a decent situation, and he's looking at prison time.  The worst part is that the folks who moved into the houses understood the situation but found it highly preferable to waiting on reluctant social service workers or stagnant public housing wait lists for their shelter.  Instead, they moved in, cleaned up and made friends with their new neighbors.

So, if the banks and the true owners didn't respond to our heroic Christian dude's letters, and the neighbors are happy to see the nuisance house on the block spruced up, who's complaining about the dude's plan of action?  It seems to me that the authorities could have adopted the same promise of the Romanian refugee who saw how he could offer a helping hand: no one needs to know until the very end.