Alienable Rights

Most of us know of our certain inalienable rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights separate us from every other country in the world and are why America is the great nation it is today.

More directly, with regard to property rights, we have the 5th Amendment: "… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" as well as the 14th Amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …"

But what about those rights that aren't inalienable, those rights that some presume to have? When thinking about your home, do you think you have a right to a view? Do you think you have the right to a certain amount of sunlight? What about the right to keep someone from innocently looking into your backyard from their secondstory window? What about the right to decide the color of your neighbor's home? How about the design? Is it your decision to say what's "compatible" in your neighborhood?

What about your neighbor's rights when they want to remodel their home? What about their right to build their home to better suit them and their family? Do you really think you have the right to tell them how to build and design their home?

Many of the homes in our communities built in the 1960s and '70s are ready for major renovations. This is a good thing. It is imperative as we have more homeowners interested in doing just this that we respect their right to do what is in their best interest.

When we buy property, we own from the center of the earth and outward, including the land underneath, and the air above. Though we have "due process of law" and zoning jurisdictions, should we really be subject to losing our inalienable rights because some people think they have phony rights to a view, sunlight and compatible design? It is not the responsibility of a homeowner, absent of an existing deed restriction, to protect a neighbor's view, sunlight or ocean breeze, or to make his or her house compatible with your 1972 "Brady Bunch" special.

Homeowners' rights are bent, walked over and crushed every week in city council and planning commission meetings all across the United States when your neighbors get up to the microphone and assert all of these phony rights in front of a council that may just be counting votes for election time.

Let's face it. Some politicians would make the "majority" happy and get reelected rather than stick their necks out to protect some homeowners' rights and maybe lose an election. We need leaders in city halls to stand up for property rights and to communicate why they are so important. In turn, they need voters to support them when they do the right thing.