Friday, September 19, 2008

State May Take Property Of Ike's Victims


It looks like there's a new bit of bad luck that could affect victim's of Hurricane Ike. Even if both they and their beach houses survived the hurricane, they could still lose their house and beach property. Others may not be able to rebuild. It all has to do with a Texas law passed back in 1959 called the Texas Open Beaches Act.

The law says the strip of beach between the average high tide line and the average low tide line is considered to be public (state) property, and no one can build or own a structure on that property. Before Ike came, these houses were not on state property, but that could well have changed since a lot of the beach was likely washed away by the storm.

When Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson toured the area this week, he said he saw hundreds of houses in jeopardy of being declared to be on state property. Making matters even worse is the fact that the state won't decide for at least a year where the state property line is now. Patterson said they want the beach to go through all four seasons before they make their decision.

That means the owners who have houses still standing could lose them a year from now. Others won't be allowed to rebuild for at least a year. Some may try to fight the law, but they will probably just lose. As Charles Irvine, a coastal law attorney, says, "No one has ever succesfully ever beaten the state when the state comes after you under the Open Beaches Act."

And if a homeowner's land is taken, he/she may not even get any compensation for the land or the structure. A Land Office spokesman said the state used to give owners $50,000, but he is unsure if that fund still exists.

It seems like the bad news just won't end for Texas beach-dwellers. First they had to endure a devastating hurricane, then they had to put up with the incompetence of FEMA and state officials, and now they must wait for a year to see if the state will condemn their property.

2 comments:

  1. Uhm, it is not the State that is taking these homes away. It was Hurricane Ike, which washed away the land they were built on. You might as well say that the State took away the house that fell off a cliff into the ocean in Santa Barbara last year. Uhm, no, that was not the State. That was Mother Nature.

    As someone who used those beaches back during my time condemned to Texas, I was quite appreciative of the fact that the State protected access to those beaches. Otherwise there would have been no access to them because the landowners would have built fences and other structures to keep people off of "their" beaches. In some of the towns, the current beach line was four blocks in from what it had been just twenty years before, because of coastal erosion. If the landowners had been allowed to keep that underwater land, there would have been no beach, just houses on stilts blocking all access to the ocean.

    This is just a risk you take when building on the ocean -- that your land is going to get washed out to sea. So it goes.

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  2. So sad. Tragedy follows tragedy.

    I love Galveston. Lived on the West End in Pirates Beach for 5 years. Some of the best years ever.

    The sound of the tide used to lull me to sleep every night.

    Now, that very sound that so used to comfort might very well terrify.

    To all those people affected by Hurricane Ike and its destruction, my heart is with you.

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