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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

#201

Post by rcxdude »

wagwang wrote: post #102
b3ing wrote: post #89

Reminds me a teacher lived thriftily in life and donated 2 or 3 million to a school in his will when he died. The school used it to buy a state of the art high school football scoreboard.

Donating money is just not it. It's so easy to spend money you didn't work hard to make yourself. If you wanna do good, figure out how to deploy the resources to your cause.

The main thing is to trust who you're donating it to. Charities often struggle to do important but boring stuff because donors want to add all kinds of strings to the donation.

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

#202

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

> And depending on the way it's written (IANAL) perhaps only C has standing.

It can't possibly be the case that only C has standing. In your outline of the scenario, C is the only party in the wrong. They purported to sell something they didn't possess. A lawsuit would have to be filed against them, not by them.

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

#203

Post by jmalicki »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #56
Aunche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land and nobody else can build there, so you get nearly all the benefits of this land while claiming a big tax deduction. It doesn't sound like what is happening here, but I don't think you should be able to block developmen…

>There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land While I'm sure that's happened once or twice and serves as great fodder to get people of a certain ideological bent riled up, for the most part nobody is giving government land that's worth a shit. They're doing it to…

There is actually a ton of this.

There is a huge Bay Area... not sure what to call it - public/private charity? - called the Peninsula Open Space Land Trust, that has a huge amount of donated land in the Silicon Valley, and is a very popular charity with very deep pockets that can buy land to basically turn into parkland.

They have over $300 million in assets and own over 97,000 acres, and have partnerships with quasi-governmental agencys like the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District to administer those lands as parkland.

The idea that noone is doing this is bullshit, and the idea that it is only done as a tax break is also bullshit.

This organization is a leading reason why living in the Bay Area is valuable and isn't complete urban sprawl. I wouldn't be willing to pay Bay Area prices if not for the existance of the land preserved through organizations like this.

https://openspacetrust.org/ https://www.openspace.org/

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

#204

Post by seligerasmus »

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.

Lots of questions about the colloquial (mis)understading of standing, and the actual standard, so might as well reply here.

IAAL, and the legal precedent is... the doctrine of standing. The article is paywalled halfway down for me, so I don't know the particulars of the complaint, but it's presumably in state court. Either way, most state doctrines are some variant of the essential elements for Article III (federal) standing, which are 1) An injury in fact that has or will imminently occur (i.e., no speculative or indefinite injury); 2) That injury must be a direct consequence (but-for causation) of the defendant's actions or inactions; 3) The injury must be redressable by the court. "Soandso did something and I, an otherwise unconnected party, may potentially lose value on my home's resale value at some undefined point in time in the future" is the type of abstract, speculative injury that never clears the hurdle. To the extent you actually want to soak in the torment of 1Ls everywhere, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife and TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez are your big ones.

Outside of that, you'd likely need standing created by statute to bring a claim. But standing is just a threshold question that every litigator with a brain will attack because it kills the whole thing before reaching the merits. Even if Ps had standing, the prospects of prevailing aren't great given the timing, parties, and issues involved.

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

#205

Post by toss1 »

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.

Yup, part of the problem is the City broke their agreement, but it seems no one with standing exists to legally protest.

One way to do this sort of thing so that it works is not a deed restriction, but to donate the rights to a third party.

We can think of property as a bundle of rights, the right to build, the right to cross the land on various vehicles or with wires or pipes, the right to subdivide, the right to mine or extract minerals, water rights, etc. For example, a piece of land may have an easement for the power company to erect poles or run lines across a strip on the land, or there may be an easement for a road or railway tracks.

Related to this particular example, the Nature Conservancy [0] runs programs whereby landowners can put a conservation easement on some or all of their land which prohibits further development (there are also other orgs doing similar work, particularly in smaller parcels as the NC often works with large areas).

The owner gets a tax deduction for donating the land development rights to a charitable org (and this usually reduces the price at which the land can be sold, at least in the short term), and the Nature Conservancy now has the right to ensure no one ever develops the land. The land can then be passed on to heirs and/or sold, but the land cannot be developed because the Nature Conservancy now owns the development rights and has standing to sue to protect the rights from being exploited.

[0] https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/prote...

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

#206

Post by thaumasiotes »

everforward wrote: post #198
pessimizer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).…

> They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue.

That isn't generally how legal restrictions on the use of real estate work. They're just part of the property.

Compare https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/real_covenant :

> Real covenants affect the landowner’s property rights and “run with the land,” meaning that future owners of the property are bound by the covenant.

Since there's a covenant on this land, the current owners are bound by it, regardless of the terms of sale they thought they were getting.

The reason that restrictions on real estate work this way is pretty simple: ownership of real estate is tracked in a giant centralized registry, so arbitrary restrictions can be recorded there.

Is this a good idea as a policy matter? Absolutely not. But we have the law we have.

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

#207

Post by philipallstar »

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.

> 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.

It's extremely common. They get called NIMBYs, because they bought a property at a certain price and a low-ability local bureaucrat wants to do something that destroys that value.

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

#208

Post by jvanderbot »

ryandrake wrote: post #192
ghaff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It'd be nice to have a non-profit that honors these. Made of collective like-minded individuals. Protected by case law. You know, like a government is supposed to be.... But I suppose a big non-profit would work. Make one.

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

#209

Post by ultrarunner »

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.

They don't have standing on the deed restriction, and would have to sue for the property devaluation directly. IANAL.

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

#210

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #192
ghaff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Everything is ultimately vulnerable, especially once you're gone. No institution lasts forever. Some are probably more likely to endure than others but there are no guarantees.
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