As a community, we are
increasingly asking our local government, City, Township, or County to enact
and enforce ordinances to eliminate blight or nuisances. Intelligent people
approach the subject with trepidation. While we might agree upon the appearance
of a blighted or diseased plant, it is not so easy to identify or define
blighted private property.
Decades ago, before much of
society accepted pornography and obscenity as a norm, the Supreme Court recognized
the risk in legislating what constitutes obscenity, and necessarily limited the
scope of the criteria. The first measure was “the average person, applying
local community standards, looking at the work in its entirety, must find that
it appeals to the prurient interest”.
Cheboygan County is by no
measure a racially or ethnically diverse community, but it is a very
economically diverse community. Bridge magazine in 2015 reported Northern
Michigan has some of the worst income disparity in the country. In Cheboygan County, the top 5% had a median
income of $241,494 in 2015. The lowest 20% of income earners had a median
income of $10,927. If the Cheboygan County income inequality seems outrageous,
Emmet County with a median income for the top 5% of $374,282 and the bottom 20%
median income of $13,656 ranked 2nd in the state among Michigan’s 83
counties.
The community standards of what
looks nice, looks right, looks attractive to these economically diverse groups
can vary widely. The owners of a modest home in the City of Cheboygan or a more
rural location living within the statistical median family income of $38,000
might have one standard. Keep the grass cut, bring the garbage can back in, and
do not turn the front yard into an automobile parking lot or worse, a wrecking
yard. The ownership of a nice boat, travel trailer, snowmobiles or atv’s is a
matter of pride and will invariably get parked in the front yard for all to see
and perhaps envy.
People living in a more up-scale
neighborhood or with a cottage on a lake, some of them in that top 5%, with a median
$241,494 income, will have a very different standard. Manicured, fertilized,
irrigated lawns, leaves raked as they fall, with professional landscaping and flowerbeds
surrounding an always maintained and immaculate residence. I know many
including myself enjoy that curbside appeal that results from pride of
ownership and money freely spent. I cannot personally afford that standard. I
know the majority of my neighbors by choice or economic necessity have some
lower standard of aesthetics.
How do we control, minimize, or
eliminate private property blight with this huge disparity in incomes,
expectations, and community standards? If I were protective of my investment in
a $500,000 home, I would organize a formal or informal homeowner’s association
to assure everyone in the neighborhood had similar expectations and a shared community
standard. Pride of ownership must also compete with our Christian ideology
condemning the worship of material goods. Never love anything that cannot love you
back.
If you expected me to offer some
simple solution to blight, I am sure you are disappointed. After listening to
many people’s expectations of what they want a blight ordinance to accomplish,
I am always disappointed. I watched the Mullett Township Board under the
leadership of Supervisor Mary Anne Gale waste thousands of dollars in legal
costs revising and revising again a blight ordinance that she eventually
tossed. It started with the most onerous of enforcement action available under
Michigan law, eminent domain. Make your house and property meet some community
standard set by the top 5% or we will take it away from you. That is as
ridiculous as telling a native Cheboyganite that our rusty, trusty, salt
corroded winter beater needs to be patched, painted, and polished before it can
be driven down your street.
I do know some of the factors
that contribute to blight. Eliminating risk factors, quitting smoking, is
easier than curing the disease of lung cancer. We have low-income
neighborhoods, old housing stock, many landlord owned units, high poverty
rates, people on assistance, low-pay jobs, high seasonal unemployment, high
drug use, and many elderly retirees on low fixed incomes. If we want to reduce
blight, each of us within our personal means and abilities should be working to
mitigate those risk factors.
There is also public property
blight. Our blighted infrastructure, neglected roads, sidewalks, lighting, and
other things that new eyes identify as ugly can create a lasting and negative memory for
visitors. That is another subject for another day.
