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A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

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Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#191

Post by francisofascii »

cameldrv wrote: post #126

Notwithstanding the merits of this case, I'm against the concept of unlimited time deed restrictions on property. Dead people should not be able to decide what living people can do with land or any other property indefinitely. That's why we have things like the rule against perpetuities, and requirements that charitable foundations spend a certain percentage of their assets every year. Some of these ideas strongly ca…

Agreed, but I am also against government selling public land, since we have so few parks and public spaces. It is much harder to buy it back later.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#192

Post by ryandrake »

ghaff wrote: post #73
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah at that point it should be in a perpetual trust or some other holding co who can fend off the city. Never trust your neighbors with your stuff.

Basically you need to pay a lawyer to set up a trust which requires trustees if you care or donate to an institution with their own lawyers who you trust with a presumably long institutional timeline.

Trusts have always seemed to me to be pretty vulnerable. You have to trust the entire line of future trustees to actually implement what's written down in the agreement. Say I donate my property to a trust set up to keep that property a public park for 1000 years. I choose someone I trust to implement it when I'm dead. But, then that person has to choose someone they trust, and so on, and at some point in the future, inevitably it's going to fall into the hands of someone who would rather sell the land and spend the proceeds on hookers and blow.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#193

Post by jjk166 »

saltcured wrote: post #92
jjk166 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you imagine YIMBY relaxing zoning and allowing things at lower cost and not simultaneously allowing people with money to push through what they want? Relaxing zoning laws never meant throwing them completely out the window. It has always been a matter of pruning zoning rules that overly restrict land use to the point that minor deviation from the norm is impossible.

Whatever the level of relaxation, I don't understand how you think it is going to enable low cost development of your preferred things, while excluding those with money from absolutely pushing rules to their limits to build their preferred things..?

Let's say the law is currently "this area is zoned for single family residences limited to at most two stories" and you change that law to "this area is zoned for residences limited to at most four stories." You have relaxed the law. It doesn't guarantee that you will get higher density housing, but the zoning obstacle has been removed and in many cases that is the sticking point.

Such a change does not permit a massive datacenter, or an oil refinery, or even a 5 story apartment building to be built. The laws aren't being pushed, they are being purposefully changed.

Now if some city council members get an attractive offer "for their constituents" to rezone a plot of land to build a datacenter on, that doesn't really have anything to do with the original zoning restrictions, and certainly is not affected by the YIMBY efforts. Zoning reform is not a strategy to reduce corruption.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#195

Post by rcxdude »

waynecochran wrote: post #90
s1artibartfast wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you dont have standing from indirect harm or costs.

What is the legal precedent for this statement? I am not disagreeing, I just would like to know what the law is.

It would be even worse for city planners if anyone could sue for a reduction in their property values due to a decision they made.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#196

Post by rcxdude »

georgeburdell wrote: post #100
coredog64 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it true that it was sold for $10? There’s a common phrase in Texas deed transfers similar to the below which just means “The sale price is none of your business” Common Texas boilerplate: That for and in consideration of ten dollars ($10.00), cash in hand paid, and other good and valuable considerations, the receipt and sufficiency of which are hereby acknowledged, the Grantor has bargained and sold, and does here…

Not a lawyer but my understanding is that a valid contract must involve an exchange of value from both parties

Yes, but that value can be pretty trivial. It's not uncommon in the UK to have a 'ground rent' of one peppercorn a year (for weird reasons of property ownership rules of flats).

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#197

Post by rcxdude »

dylan604 wrote: post #84
projektfu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more bizarre, the $10 cash never changes hands.

Sounds like that sale should be null and voided at that point

Generally only if there was some effort to collect it.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#198

Post by everforward »

pessimizer wrote: post #170
everforward wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would generally be the opposite, what law gives them standing to sue? My knowledge as a non-lawyer generally agrees with above, most states won’t allow you to sue for neighbors doing something legal that decreases your property value (CA is the exception I’m aware of, and even then it’s a “sometimes” kind of thing). I’m not even sure who they’d sue. Presuming the land is zoned for a datacenter, the datacenter is a…

> neighbors doing something legal The question is about doing something illegal , such as removing a covenant that was involved in a sale when reselling? If it is something that could have been objected to by the original seller (they would have had standing to sue) and they have not agreed to change the covenant (because they are dead), it seems as if anyone affected should be able to sue. The breaking of the covena…

> If it is something that could have been objected to by the original seller (they would have had standing to sue) and they have not agreed to change the covenant (because they are dead), it seems as if anyone affected should be able to sue.

They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue. In this case, if the original seller died then standing to sue would be inherited (I believe). If the inheritor doesn’t care, then neither does the government.

There’s also a bunch of weird edges. Like if the land just isn’t usable as a park because it’s too out of the way to be worth maintenance or building it would be insane because it’s a literal swamp, what is the city supposed to do with that? Own it and just do nothing with it in perpetuity?

> If there is a covenant that says that the land will be a park, that's the "zoning" by the seller being stricter than local zoning, which means that it also conforms to local zoning.

Sellers don’t get to do any zoning, the city does. You can add a covenant that says a single family home in San Francisco can only be used for fracking, despite the fact that there’s no oil and zoning wouldn’t allow it.

> I can sue Facebook if they allow another user to violate their terms of service.

No, you can’t. Or rather, you can file it, but it will be tossed out immediately. There is no tort for failing to enforce your own ToS. You might be able to sue Facebook for negligently failing to stop a user from breaking an actual law.

It’s against Facebook ToS to use a name other than your legal name on your account. How confident are you that you could win a lawsuit against Facebook because Post Malone’s account isn’t named “Austin Post”?

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#199

Post by BrandoElFollito »

arjie wrote: post #43
helterskelter wrote: post #3

Wow they had the condition that the land be used as a park baked into the deed when they sold it to the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed. Now their home is worthless because nobody wants to live next to a data center. When are we going to hold local government officials accountable for bullshit like this? Send them to prison.

It was unclear from this summary but there are a few parties here: the original farmer A, the neighbouring family B, the city C, and the datacenter builder D. A sold to C with the deed restriction C sold to D without the restriction B tried to sue to stop D from building the datacenter, but B has no standing. Okay, that makes sense. It seems to me that A or C has standing, but not B. And depending on the way it's wri…

I don't know how the law works in the US, but isn't the selling by C illegal and moot? C accepted the conditions, but did not repect them.

Shouldn't C be attacked (legally of course) automatically?

Say C decides to build on a land they own a nuclear plant with known life endengering issues. Or a place to publicly hang people. Or other completely illegal things. They will surely be stopped by someone (the state?) from doing this? Automatically, that is without the need for a citizen to raise the point.

This is a similar case: they want to do something illegal (not follow what they ageed to)

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#200

Post by ajb »

jjk166 wrote: post #60
arjie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was unclear from this summary but there are a few parties here: the original farmer A, the neighbouring family B, the city C, and the datacenter builder D. A sold to C with the deed restriction C sold to D without the restriction B tried to sue to stop D from building the datacenter, but B has no standing. Okay, that makes sense. It seems to me that A or C has standing, but not B. And depending on the way it's wri…

Why shouldn't B have standing? They presumably are residents of and taxpayers to city C, and they face property devaluation stemming from nearby municipal actions.

Depends how it works in the jurisdiction, but in common law usually this form of restriction is like a contract, but between two pieces of land, or between a piece of land and the public, rather than between two persons. In the former case only the current owner on the benefited property can complain. In the latter case, any member of the public can - but I'm not sure if a member of the public can create such a restriction.
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