KVNUFTP

Property Rights and Dead Letter Laws

An email we received today regarding the property rights issue (name withheld, permission to reprint given):

If the city is going to enforce a 50 year old law after not doing so for like half a century, and they’ve also approved all the construction of duplexes etc., and the city government has let people make money off of the parking strips (in a round about way granted, but still) for a long time, now they’re taking that away.  Ya the law has been on the books, but it wasn’t ever enforced, so was it really ever on the books (I think they’re called dead letter laws, but they basically are no longer relevant, but still on the books, or never were relevant, but are on there for moral purposes.  I think some state somewhere actually still has a law that says it’s illegal to have sex with a raccoon), what’s the city going to do to reimburse the property owners it’s taking income away from?  Is there a devaluation of the properties (and hence less property tax to the city)?  And are they going to pass a new law, since it seems the original law was never enforced (and, so it can be assumed, was never intended to be enforced – that’s more of a spirit of the law vs the letter of the law type thing).

Also, they can’t call it a parking strip if you can’t park there, they should call it a “small public place” or a “demilitarized parking zone.”  Also, if people want to protest, they will just start parking on their yards.###