Townships and their laws
My parents are visiting Costa Rica right now and they were telling me today at lunch about a ridiculous situation back at home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. For those of you who don’t know, I grew up an in area about 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia called Lower Merion Township. It’s a very nice place to live except for the cold weather. Great schools, close to Philadelphia, safe, quiet, good food, lots of amenties, world-class golf courses, etc. I think it’s a good place to raise a family and, should I ever go that route in my life, I would consider Lower Merion to be a great place to do it. That being said, this story has some ridiculous aspects. I won’t use specific names or anything in the story because it involves family friends and I don’t really want this entry to come up in a google search for their name or whatever.
A house in our neighborhood was somewhat falling apart over the last few years. It was a little odd because it’s a very nice neighborhood with some very expensive houses in it. But this house wasn’t being lived in (although it was owned by people from the area) and it was kind of wasting away. From the street, you couldn’t tell it had problems. Even being inside it still seemed pretty normal. But there were a bunch of underlying problems with the house structurally and if it had been inspected, I’m sure it would have been declared unsafe to live in or whatever housing inspectors would classify it as. That being said, the owners of the house knew about this problem and they were debating what to do with it. There is a little more complication to it but I won’t get into those details since they aren’t relevant.
Anyway, one of our neighbors looked into buying the place and integrating it with their property. They came to an agreement with the owners and they took control of the land and house with the intention of knocking the house down to landscape the area (it is adjacent to their property so it was a good opportunity). Before closing on the property, the new owners did some minimal research into the demolition permits. They knew it was going to be a pain in the ass but they decided it was still worth it to buy the house and knock it down for two main reasons. First, it was a good addition to their property (makes it one of the biggest properties in the neighborhood). And second it prevented anyone else from buying it and putting up an ugly house right next door thereby devaluing their already valuable house.
Anyway, so they buy it and go to get the permit. Meanwhile, part of the house is actually in significant danger of collapse. They find out that the township won’t give them the permit without them jumping through tons of hoops. However, should the house collapse, they would face a large fine!! Ridiculous. So they have to jump through all sorts of hoops and get an expensive demolition company to come out and take down the house. They had to get various studies done. The sewage pipe connecting to the street had to be concreted off. The gas line needed to be sealed off by a certified person or whatever. I don’t really know all of these details, but there were a ton of hoops to jump through. I just can’t believe the catch 22 of “we won’t let you knock the house down” and “we’ll fine you if the house falls down”.
Finally, sometime in the last few weeks, the house was taken down by a large machine (complete overkill for the job imo). What I took away from this is that laws are often ridiculous. Gambling laws in North Carolina (see the recent case that was decided there about people running a home game). Township housing laws in Lower Merion. Tons of laws (or lack thereof) in Costa Rica. And I’m also hearing from my business partners about some similarly ridiculous stuff on the Cayman Islands.
Anyway, I’m off to see the sunset here at the beach in Costa Rica. Tough life…
Related posts:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to get future posts delivered to your feed reader.
Libertarianism ftw imo.