Months ago, I wrote about a neighborhood services effort to notify homeowners of ways in which they fell short of City of Whitewater code standards. The post, entitled, “Your Messy House? My Better Plan!” criticized the overly fussy letters to residents. I suggested alternative targets for the city’s aesthetic ire.
There’s an even bigger problem with those notices (or similar efforts) than their pettiness, though: some of these requirements amount to the expectation that you can require prosperity, and prohibit lack of means.
In many cases, a person may have forgone basic home improvements not because she is careless or slovenly, but because other needs are more pressing (e.g., food, clothing, medical care). This should be obvious – the tendency to preserve a home from basic deteriorate is common to homeowners, across all income groups. Persisting, curled shingles or broken windows are not aesthetic problems, for goodness’ sake; they’re economic problems.
A community cannot – successfully and seriously — ban lack of means. Do you lack the money for shoes? Very well, then: we’ll require you, by ordinance, to purchase new ones.
We’ll not, for example, make a poor woman’s condition better by requiring that she buy new clothes. If she reasonably could, she would. (Nor, by contrast, should fine clothing matter.)
A few in the community, though, may think that it’s not a matter of means, but of judgment and priority. There we are – the notion that a few people know how to manage basic priorities, and though government regulation they will guide others to a proper understanding.
I am unpersuaded that a few, supposedly wise people need to guide other homeowners in basic property maintenance. Perhaps – although I cannot read others’ minds – there is for those guardians (public and private) of property maintenance a feeling of benevolent superiority.
It’s just condescension, to my mind. People do not fail to act in these matters for lack of desire, will, or sound judgment.
They likely confront different immediate priorities, and priorities that government cannot readily alter through regulation.