Whose Tree Is It, Anyway?

First of all, we didn’t get enough info on the tree story above to come to any educated conclusion…was that on purpose?

Minmin and Heather,
Yes, that spot on Lafayette in front of "E.'s" house is a doozy...but you still can get a stroller through...but not a large cart. That root really spreads out, don't it though?! Parks will probably eventually remove the tree and put something else in. The south side of Lafayette from Fulton going up the hill to about Carlton has, unfortunately, overly narrow sidewalks. Lafayette's north side has much, much wider sidewalks.

If the property is a 1- to 3-family (may require owner-occupied status...can't remember), the City will do sidewalk work...there's a waiting list of course.

You can go ahead and do the sidewalk on your own dime. Most people do probably. You have to get on the tree root trimming waiting list (too late now for this year probably if anyone is thinking of doing sidewalk work that will require root trimming). When you get a date, you schedule your sidewalk contractor to come out to break up and remove the cement before Parks comes to do the trimming; then the contractor (usually the next day) pours the sidewalk.

Again, the homeowner is not necessarily responsible for sidewalk work. BUT, the homeowner's insurance company will often decline renewing a policy if there is a sidewalk tripping hazard...doesn't have to be a huge difference in levels from one slab to the other...I have to wonder how the insurance co's do not come down more heavily on the crazy slate/bluestone sidewalk messes that seem to never or only barely ever get fixed.

Remember, all this is thanks to the city dismissing itself from liability. Only a bunch of years ago, it made it the homeowner's liable. Thank you Mr. Mayor. The insurance companies freaked and started denying renewals all over the place. The sidewalk contractors have made a mint. [Meanwhile though, I believe the City is a co-defendant so specious slip-n-falls probably will not fly…I have heard of some beauts. For example, “I fell on your rather smooth sidewalk 8 months ago and want $3m”…real story of a friend who got a letter from a lawyer for the plaintiff…in the end friend’s lawyer said to ignore it.]

I feel this kind of homeowner liability is fine in the burbs, especially where you own up to the roadway and may even have the option NOT to have a sidewalk, but easily takes on the feeling of gov't not doing it's job with a strong taste of the arbitrary running through it since this was pushed through in NYC where so much is paved and owned/controlled by the gov’t. The move to making homeowners liable saved the City tons of dough but smacks of poor urban planning, especially because the City did not devote the resources to plan the switch-over. Education, outreach and resources were/have not been sufficiently available to property owners; the system is less than obvious to navigate. Look at the general ignorance on Brownstoner…and these are rootin’ tootin’ homeowners many of us.

The tree questions highlight this. If you do not have a tree in front of your house, you will probably incur fewer costs and fewer hassles with insuring the property. You probably had no input in the tree-planting decision AND, when a tree was planted back when, it was under a different schema in terms of sidewalk responsibility.

It seems to me that just as trees planted 60 to 80 years ago, some having proven themselves as species wholly unsuited to life as street trees, started to reach unwieldy girths and root runs, the City stuck the homeowners with a near impossible set of rules to live under. The insurance companies hopped on it right away while but the City was not equipped to handle the influx of root trimming requests. Meanwhile, homeowners were desperate to get the City to come deal with trees so sidewalk work could be completed to satisfy the insurers.

There is also a question of possible arbitrary (and de facto private) enforcement, if you will, because insurers may not consistently apply criteria from place to place…plus, the various people who walk around taking photos and writing up assessments for the insurers are not infallible…you get a meany writing your house up and you’re done for…AND, there are different insurers acting inconsistently one from the other no matter how well any one of them is run individually. This leads to an unfair situation with all cards stacked against homeowners…and possible punitive treatment of certain areas. Insurers have an out so they can pull policies in the hood AND work over their more affluent policy-holders to cough it up.

If the City is the overriding decision-maker determining sidewalk hazards, there is recourse for the property owner. Currently, it’s a privatized minor free-for-all that has left homeowners preyed upon. Homeowners are individuals…insurers are not…contractors may not be that small either. The little guy ends up paying. In some rare cases, block associations get it together and have the whole block redone at once which lowers the cost to the individual homeowners but still leads to a big out-of-pocket.

If you have a super-deep sidewalk, you're held liable for a lot more square footage than someone with a shallow depth sidewalk—another arbitrary element to all this that struck me the minute the City stepped away from liability. So, a bit sidewalk leads to more repair costs, sweeping, snow shoveling, etc... The sidewalks are owned by the City and generally were put in place by the City in residential Brooklyn. Trees owned by the City and planted in, say, 1930 are now getting to be huge, pushing up sidewalks and dropping branches on roadways, cars, etc.

The sidewalk liability change has been a hidden tax on homeowners. I can understand that an office tower on 6th Avenue and 49th is responsible for its sidewalks…heck, they want to be--and these large commercial properties sometimes have special paving put down that blends with their esplanades

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at September 19, 2008 7:32 PM