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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNeighbor refuses to grant easement for powerline to new home next door.
Kent Fuller's new house has three bedrooms, a loft and a drive-through basement garage that is roomy enough for four cars.
What the recently completed Woodland Hills residence doesn't have is an electric line attached to it.
His next-door neighbor has refused to grant an easement so the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power can run a power line across his backyard and hook up Fuller's house.
"It's put us in kind of a pickle," said Fuller, who with his mother has invested about $750,000 in the lot and the turreted three-story house.
I thought the DWP would provide electricity like it has for every other house around here. - Kent Fuller
"They say that my only option is to pay for an underground line that would go beneath the Ventura Freeway and connect to power on the north side of it."
And before the DWP starts digging, it wants Fuller to pay the $28,000 trenching bill.
Fuller and his 72-year-old mother, Linden Logan, say they've sunk every penny they have into the house and can't even borrow on it because it lacks electricity.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-power-problems-20140707-story.html

LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)Good for the neighbor. (The neighbor's got solar panels up on their much smaller house, fwiw.)
Owl
(3,720 posts)LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)It's right on the corner, the big stupid looking place with the turret mentioned in the article.
Money can't buy taste. It also can't buy the sense not to put a huge house on a terrible lot, apparently.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Or just a miscommunication with the power company. The neighbor's got a point that running a line through his backyard for this person's convenience would devalue the property.
Weird he didn't have to have the power connected before he got a Certificate of Occupancy. How did he even get his permits without a confirmed scheme for providing electricity?
For example, I don't think you can build in most places around here without connecting to the electrical grid.
And he put $750k into the house, but can't do the $28k for a power line?
Plan Ahe
Lochloosa
(16,474 posts)FSogol
(47,135 posts)Easements are set aside for utilities.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)Easements usually run along the edge of the property and are set when the neighborhood is constructed. In this case, they want to plant a new pole and run a new cable right across the middle of this guys backyard decades after his home was built, to accommodate a new building on a previously empty lot next door. They're not using an existing easement, and the power company can't simply create a new easement across the middle of your property. It could, in theory, file an eminent domain case against the landowner to try and seize a new one, but it's unheard of for a California utility to try something like that just to benefit a single customer (and the utility would still have to pay money to the landowner...eminent domain easements aren't "free" .
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)used in construction was disguised for the inspection, because he knew there was an issue getting the utility connected.
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)I've never had a new home built, but when we put a one-room addition on our existing home, we had to get approval permits for a whole bunch of stuff before we could take the next step.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)The comments in the LA Times are not sympathetic to this Grandmother and son. First of all they think the house is too big for one person to live in with an occasional grandchild stopping by. They also are not sympathetic to them due to spending so much money but not planning everything out before hand. I was surprised by the comments, but when they mentioned the environmental impact on this monstrosity of a house for one person, I see their point in some ways. The neighbor does not own them anything and does not have to put up a pole in his back yard.
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)I'd already be pissed if some idiot decided to build a ugly stucco castle with a freakin' turret next to me, if they then demanded to stick a pole in the middle of my yard to save themselves $28K at my expense (after they'd already spent 3/4 of a mil on said ugly house) I'd tell them to pound sand too.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)tabasco
(22,974 posts)There should be no "property" and no "property rights," man.
leftstreet
(36,451 posts)There is some connection between personal property and means of production. Personal property is considered private property that is movable, as almost an extension of one's person and does include property from which one has the right to exclude others. These objects can range from CDs to houses, depending on one's perspective, but definitions tend to include personal items such as clothing, books, food, or records. However where personal property explicitly differs from private property is in its productive capacity. Not all forms of personal property have productive capacity, whereas private property like land and machines might have some productive capacity.[11][not in citation given][12] From the socialist perspective, private property refers to capital or means of production that is owned by a business or few individuals and operated for their profit. As mentioned above, personal property refers to tangible items and possessions individuals own. Socialism does not advocate the abolition of personal property, believing that it is an acceptable form of ownership of an item, unlike private property.[13][not in citation given]
From the Marxist perspective, which is very similar to the socialist perspective, private property is a social relationship, not (as with personal property) a relationship between person and thing. It also describes personal property, as above, as those objects which are personal, or an extension of one's self. The Marxist perspective also does not advocate the abolition of personal property: it believes that it is only private property that should be done away with.[13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_property#Socialist_perspectives
Good grief
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)hunter
(39,230 posts)The house under construction is plenty visible on google maps if you want to be a voyeur. (Zooming in made me feel dirty...)
It seems entirely possible the property once belonged with the previously existing house and was later sub-divided out and sold.
Nevertheless, overhead power lines running through backyards are long obsolete.
Most weird about this story, there's a fucking freeway in the backyard. That can't be good for property values. Power lines seem trivial in comparison.
I think if we went back in time to the 1930's and showed some San Fernando Valley resident this article they'd probably hang themselves in utter despair for the future. Where are the flying cars? Where is the glittery emerald city lit by electricity too cheap to meter, with lush gardens irrigated by unlimited desalinated seawater? "
It's simply not possible to pick sides in this story. There's just too much 21st century world-gone-mad in it.
Disclaimer: I've lived in the San Fernando Valley. I escaped once, then returned briefly, and then escaped again. My parents and all my siblings have similar stories. My parents are hard-core isolationists now. They live in a tropical rain forest and drink and bathe in water that falls on their roof. They eat local pigs, goats, and produce. If this civilization ends they'd first notice their telephone wasn't working, their internet was down, and there was no mail in their Post Office Box. Other than that, life would go on.
That's my own imaginary refuge. My wife's sailing skills are much better than my own, and maybe I could learn too, but I do own an accurate plastic sextant and a few very robust timekeeping devices for navigation.
Our family was in the San Fernando Valley because some of my ancestors liked horses and Hollywood. Later, one of my grandfathers was an aerospace engineer who built titanium stuff for the Apollo project using skills he'd somehow absorbed by osmosis from the bad-boy geniuses of World War II. His World War II job, as an officer in the Army Air Force, was keeping "eccentric" people deemed essential to the war effort out of jail.
Eccentric was the "nice" word for alcoholics, drug addicts, homosexuals, non-whites, non-Christians, uppity brilliant women, socialists, people with suspect national loyalties, and any other non-white-male-protestant who could do science or technology or be a pretty face in war propaganda.

hunter
(39,230 posts)
It's gentrified. No amazing gardens of my childhood. A clean triple garage and a clean concrete driveway I remember as hopelessly disintegrating gravel and asphalt.
But a century plant I knew, or it's decedents, still lives in the far corner of the property.

I hope they don't kill it. They've pretty much killed everything else.
Coventina
(28,102 posts)I have ZERO sympathy for Fuller & Logan. They've constructed an eyesore that in no way resembles a "retirement home."
It is a blight on the neighborhood and I wouldn't give them an easement unless they bought me out of my home for a VERY good price.
hunter
(39,230 posts)Beam the freaks back down to their home planet and let's get the hell away from here at maximum warp.
Many things in that part of the world are eyesores and offenses against mother nature and all humanity.
I experienced some really, really funny (or maybe deeply disturbing) stories about that neighborhood.
I once applied for a technical job in the porn industry, blind date. The nice man, recognizing I was disturbed, gave me a hundred dollars for my trouble. A very nice free lunch.
Alas it all still lives on in my dreams but I've moved past the worst nightmares.
One of my high school mates got herself killed, murder-suicide. Porn guy's mistake was to let her drive. He was stoned, she was not, but she wanted to die.
I wrote a story in high school that made it to Hollywood in a very twisted fashion.
Maybe that's when I gave up on this world. Distanced myself.
Two of my siblings have SAG credits.
Abandoned lives.
Coventina
(28,102 posts)It sounds like very deeply scarring events.
I get what you mean about "first world problems" in your previous post, but maybe my perspective is a little different.
I grew up as a third world person in a first world country (USA).
My family was so poor I spent a good portion of my childhood years homeless.
Through many years of hard work, and I'll admit, some luck, I am now a homeowner.
Maybe my years of deprivation have made me protective of the home (first one!) I now own.
It would take a lot of careful consideration before I would do ANYTHING to jeopardize the value and hard work I have put into it.
Having a home was something I watched so many others have, and dreamed of for so many years. No way would I sell off some of it for some clueless, idiot neighbors who clearly have more money than sense.
flamingdem
(40,069 posts)generator.. Not that I'm taking sides, both are jerks.
NutmegYankee
(16,378 posts)My eyes hurt just looking at it.
cerveza_gratis
(281 posts)
NutmegYankee
(16,378 posts)And the occupant isn't a raging mass murderer...
cerveza_gratis
(281 posts)NutmegYankee
(16,378 posts)Warpy
(113,131 posts)but yes, it's really awful. I can't believe they spent that much money on that, California prices are just plain nuts.
It's hard to say what that moonscape of a too-small yard will look like once they get some ground cover and a few shrubs in. The best suggestion I have for that stark looking house is ivy, a lot of ivy.
And good luck to them getting UPS deliveries there, it looks like they've got two one car garages but absolutely nothing that looks like a main entrance.
It made me grateful for my shabby fixer in a bad area.
flvegan
(64,737 posts)I find it tough to believe, in a brief view of the property and the area that there's no utility easement for electricity to the property. Without looking at the plat (assuming it is indeed platted land), at least. What I would be more inclined to believe is that they can get an electric hook up, just not one with enough capacity. Just a guess, don't know much about electricity, but I do know quite a bit about real property title.
No clue how they got permits for this huge place without a proper easement. The article states that the neighbor WAS going to give an easement but the property, held in trust, had interests that balked at the idea. And that, my friends, is how a lawsuit begins.
While the power line might devalue the property, most normal people purchase easements like this for that reason if that easement is needed. Somewhere, the dollars don't add up.
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,858 posts)They say they can't borrow money due to the situation. So are we to believe they paid cash?
If they have a loan, I find it hard to believe the lender wouldn't front the additional $28k to make the house habitable.
If they own it free and clear, they certainly can find someone to lend them a small amount. The vig might be a little high but the lender has to wet his beak a little.
I used to know a couple of trust fund babies when I worked worked in the mortgage business who used to cherry pick deals like these. They specialized in lending to rich fuck-ups.
Heck, I'll loan them the money. I'm gonna need $56k back though.
Autumn
(47,211 posts)edge of the neighbors property and put in an underground line. That would be a hell of a lot cheaper.
Historic NY
(38,403 posts)before he built. No one wants overhead lines, so he ought to pay to play or get use to candelabras and kerosene lamps.
Princess Turandot
(4,835 posts)The slit-window turret looks like a prison tower. The place just needs a higher fence.
The Google Maps Street View, dated 10/12, is here: http://goo.gl/maps/sBwsW
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,858 posts)It's the skinny widowed high-rise federal holding facility. Every once in a while a skinny convict squeezes out the window and climbs down with a bed-sheet rope.
treestar
(82,383 posts)title search?
rufus dog
(8,419 posts)Say a prayer for the Pretender.