The entitlement of the rich and famous
Malibu. The beach. Millionaires’ McMansions built directly ON the beach. Millionaires trying to convince everyone that they own the beach.
Many celebrities and multimillionaires own sprawling Malibu homes overlooking the Pacific, including actors Robert Redford and Angelina Jolie, the rapper Dr Dre, the director Rob Reiner and media mogul David Geffen. In an effort to protect their privacy, some homeowners have now taken matters into their own hands by employing security guards to patrol the sands in front of their houses.
Twice in the past few weeks, members of the public have been asked to leave Malibu’s Escondido Beach by a uniformed security guard who wrongly claimed they were on private property and threatened them with a fine for trespassing.
So members of the public should start asking the uniformed security guards to leave the beach, and calling the cops if they refuse to comply.
“There’s 27 miles of beach in Malibu – it’s one of the few public spaces we have in LA County – and out of those 27, 20 are blocked by private development,” says Jenny Price, an environmental writer and co-creator of a popular app which tells the public how to access specific beaches. “Those 20 miles have for decades been treated as a private riviera … It’s the most egregious example of privatisation of public land in Los Angeles.”
People do that here too. There’s a park in Alki in West Seattle that runs along the beach for miles and then abruptly hits a sign saying private property past this point DO NOT PUT A TOE HERE. But it’s beach – I don’t think they can own the beach, any more than they can own Puget Sound.
The state’s earliest laws dictate that the area between the water line and the mean high tide line is public land. To put it simply: wet sand equals public beach. In theory, anyone could walk the 1,100 miles of California’s coast and never set foot on private property.
Of late, however, wealthy homeowners have taken to erecting their own “No trespassing” signs and putting out traffic cones to discourage people from parking their cars. The hiring of private security guards is the newest skirmish in a long-running battle.
It’s like the battle over footpaths in the UK, and before that, the enclosure of the commons. It’s also like the battle over cattle grazing on public land here in the US.
According to Price, the problem stems from the City of Malibu’s disinclination to stand up to homeowners. Price recently sent a folder of photographic evidence to the council detailing illegal no-parking signs along the Malibu coastal roads.
“They said, ‘Oh no, those are on private property. We can’t do anything about them. We consider them requests.’ These are signs that say the vehicle will be towed! … What you’re seeing in Malibu is the wealthy and powerful who have the money to fight [for their interests].”
And the sense of entitlement to proceed.
Geffen’s mansion is notorious locally for having a set of fake garage doors painted on to a patch of wall adjoining the road. When Aaron Crow, a 42-year-old software engineer, parked his car in this spot last month, he was given a $53 ticket for obstructing access – despite there being no official parking restrictions in place and, ultimately, no garage in place for which access was required. He is now contesting the ticket.
But Price says the situation is slowly getting better. The 1976 Coastal Act codified common-law public access and is more frequently enforced now that the public are increasingly aware of what is happening. In July, following a decade-long legal fight, a public walkway opened up giving access to a 1.5-mile stretch of sand known as “Billionaire’s Beach”.
Geffen had spent years fighting against the path, which had been promised by the previous owners in 1983 in exchange for planning permission. Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has even suggested staging a Sand Aid concert to continue the fight for beach access. “It’s about taking back the beach,” Lopez wrote in a recent article, “no matter how expensive the legal fight may be.”
Malibu for the people!
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But let the greater fellon loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But let the greater fellon loose
Who steals the common from the goose
And geese will still a common lack
Until the day we steal it back.
Well, I can’t say I have much disagreement with stopping driving and parking of cars on beaches, but not to allow anyone on a public beach is disgraceful. And several of the stars you named are prominent environmental activists – what are they doing building houses on a BEACH? Beaches can be damaged rather easily.
We had a similar problem when I lived in the DFW area, only these rich folks went even further. They cut down trees that were on public land owned by Fish and Wildlife, so they could see the lake from their mansions. When we went in to do the environmental impact statement, the conclusion of the Corps of Engineers is that there was no point in fining them or stopping them because there were no valuable trees left to protect, just shrubby invasives. So you cut down the trees quickly no one can stop you, because the area isn’t valuable habitat anymore.
I wondered that too. I didn’t even know people were allowed to build houses right on beaches – hello, high tides? Tsunamis? Plus as you say, environmentally it’s just appalling. Plus it’s theft of the commons. All property is, ultimately, but beaches that much more so.
The houses are, essentially, temporary– the ocean will steal the land back, and sooner rather than later. However, access in the here and now is important. There are poor kids who’ve grown up less than 10 miles from the ocean who have never been to a beach. It isn’t right.
You can’t own anything beyond the tideline.
They do this in Florida too along the beaches of the barrier islands. I lived not far from celebrities mansions on the beach, use to ride my bike past, etc. There are some spots for public access depending on the local municipality, but some “towns” are very protective and have no public access walkways, etc.
They don’t even let the bus that runs down the islands stop in their town, so the rich people’s servants have to get off the bus about three miles away and walk in the heat to get to the mansions they work in.
There are “private beach” signs all over the place… which I would ignore. I used to take 20 mile hikes along the beach… passing mansions of people like Chevy Chase and Julia Roberts and some famous singer who I forget, with beach-side parties where dozens of people in gowns and suits would be drinking champagne and eating whatever on tables with white tablecloths draped down to the sand, servants hovering… They would glare at me as I trudged past with my bare chest, shorts, my tangled sunbleached long hair and my bag full of seashells or whatever else I’d scavenged… and I’d sneer right back.
The undeveloped and protected stretches were beautiful… but I learned to detest that state.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3238483/security-privacy.jpg
It doesn’t quite apply because the cartoon is about governments stripping away our privacy in the name of ‘security’, but there’s a similar lack of focus on the big picture. I think I’d rather have strangers roaming around than security guards. But, of course, I have an Attack Fortran, so what do I know?
That’s a bit different. Footpaths run over land people actually do own. They own the land, but people have a right to walk there. Some people buy land with a footpath across it and then refuse to allow people to use the path or go out of their way to make access hard. There are lots of reasons why you might not want people walking over your land. The one I’m most sympathetic to is that some people do things like leave farm gates open or trample across a field of crops instead of walking round the outside. And I can understand why people don’t want strangers wandering across their gardens. But, ultimately, you knew that when you bought the place.
I bet this sounds really strange to non-Brits. We have some strange laws. I was taking to someone yesterday who claimed that in parts of America landowners have some rights to some of the airspace above their land (I’m not sure I believe that, but never mind). By way of contrast, in the UK people might have the right to walk or drive over your land. The people who sell you a house have certain rights to insist that you don’t use it in certain ways. For example, the company that built my house put in a clause (I have no idea why) that says I can’t keep livestock on the property. I have no intention of doing so, but wtf? We also have this weird idea of ‘leases’. You can buy a house but not own the lease to the property, which means that you might have to ask permission from the leaseholder to make alterations to the house. Typically, when you buy a house it comes with a lease for x years and when x runs out you have to ask (by which I mean pay) the lease owners to extend it, otherwise you don’t own your house any more. Of course, courts get involved and the owners have certain rights, but again: wtf?
Oh, and you can own a house but not own the loft space. Your neighbour (or someone else entirely) might own your roof and loft. They might be able to forbid you from repairing your roof or using your loft.
None of this makes the slightest bit of sense. Well, the footpaths thing does, I’m all for those. Oh, and rights of way. Tony Blair was the MP for Sedgefield (close to where I live) while he was Prime Minister. He had a house in a nearby village and famously restricted his neighbours’ access to their own houses by erecting fucking great gates the instant he became PM. He didn’t even live there, of course. He just made his neighbours’ lives more annoying because fame.
The real battle with footpaths in the UK is the same as the battle for common land. Developers want to take those things away and councils are under pressure to accept. There are various green belts, some allotments and a nature reserve within a couple of minutes of my house. Developers are constantly applying to build on all of those and at some point the council is bound to agree. They can do this. They can also destroy footpaths and rights of way. I think that’s the battle.
On the upside, there’s a charming counter-example. Newcastle has some quite large belts of common land, some pretty close (maybe quarter of a mile) to the city centre. People graze cows on some parts of that land. One of the University’s halls of residence is on the edge of one of those belts so students have to walk through a field of cows to get home.
This appears when I copy and paste more than a certain amount of text. Fair enough if that’s what you want but heads up if you don’t.
I live about thirty miles north of there. The billionaires have actually lost big in the courts and no longer have a legal leg to stand on. Not that that bothers them, but at this point the Coastal Commission can fine them something like $10,000 a day (?? totally guessing, don’t remember, except that it was a stiff fine) for impeding access.
Not long ago, somebody (Larry Ellisens? Mr. Big at Oracle and a major hemorrhoid) actually had to pay.
So, from what I’ve been seeing in the LATimes, it’s not quite as unequal a battle as it was before. But it is discouraging to hear the billionaires still aren’t abiding by the law.
The houses aren’t built on the beach in the sense of on top of. They’re on the beach in the sense of right next to. Walk out the back garden and there’s sand between your toes.
When the Scottish Highland Clearances were going up to the mid 19th C, some cleared-off peasants responded by building dwellings in the only location they were legally allowed to: between the high and low tide zones. There they endured conditions of damp and cold that are barely imaginable.
On the island of Skye, the foundations of some of these pathetic buildings can still be seen.
quixote – well the photo in the story shows a slew of huge houses on the beach – at the foot of the bluff and on the sand.
[looking at it again] The ones farther from the viewer are actually at the edge of the water – there is water lapping the foundations. It’s utterly bizarre.
This photo –