Billionaires Destroying History

[ty]

L.A. Couple Goes to Court in Battle to Demolish Marilyn Monroe's Iconic Former Home https://t.co/Ou5iHIs9tP
- People (@people) May 9, 2024
The home’s owners filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles to prevent it from being declared a historic and cultural monument so they can demolish it

Comments

[varioussaints]

honestly, the idea of the city being able to control what you do with your freehold private property (beyond things like bylaws/safety standards/etc. that apply to everyone in the area) is difficult for me to accept. my first instinct is to say that the committee seeking to preserve it should have to buy the owners out at fair market value. if not, the owners should be able to do what they want.

I had a friend who had relatives who lived in a historical building and it was a nightmare for them, everyone was telling them how to treat and preserve their property (that was declared to have historical value after the relatives moved in) without ever ponying up the money to do any of it. the relatives ended up selling the house and moving. on one hand, history is important, but on the other, some of these historical designations saddle owners with insane costs just so everyone but them can enjoy the house. at a certain point, houses have to be for the people living in them.

on the other hand, the other part of me is tired of people demolishing perfectly good buildings (historical or otherwise) just because it's not the perfect(TM) home. it's an incredibly wasteful practice and unless there are actual concerns (which, with some of these older houses, there absolutely could be), either live with it (with or without minor renovations) or sell it to someone else. buy in a new development if you simply must have everything tailored to your exact specifications.

[komnene]

Heritage listing is about there being things in our environment that are bigger than ourselves. Private property becomes secondary to the idea of the common good - that a place can become imbued with such meaning to the community that it no longer should be up to a single property owner to do whatever they want with that place because in doing so they're not just affecting themselves, but potentially causing a loss to one of the threads of the story that make up our community. In the same way that planning codes protect the community from rooves falling on their heads - but more fulfilling.

[varioussaints]

I understand that, but unless the community is also going to pony up the funds required to ensure that maintenance and upgrades adhere to the designation requirements, it’s not an equitable outcome for the homeowner to be unilaterally saddled with the financial burden. maybe if we actually lived in a society that wasn’t run by capitalism on steroids, I would feel differently, but that’s not the world we live in. some people really do just buy housing to be housing and a lot of older homes, heritage or otherwise, need work. buildings are made of organic materials and they cannot last forever.

[komnene]

Yes I think that's fair - they should be better funded and better supported. And the best way to conserve a building is for it to have a use, so for most buildings it's about sensitively managing change.