How Coronado Council Stole a 72-Year-Old Woman’s Property Rights

All thieves have excuses. The people who took Kathryn Lindsey’s property are no exception, but they’ll never be charged with any crime.

Kathryn is a 72-year-old retired secretary. She was a single parent before single parents had their own magazines.

She saved and bought a small house in Coronado in 1963. It takes a long time to save for a house by typing at $4 an hour.

Over the next few years, Kathryn bought three more houses right next to hers. They were zoned for apartments. She paid extra for that.

Twenty-two years later, the houses were still there, two blocks from the beach, renting for less than half the going market rate.

Then came the mayor’s race. And the new mayor promised he would protect Coronado from condominiums by downzoning, i.e. outlawing certain kinds of high-density development. The City Council had hearings. People told the council how historic Kathryn’s block was and how it should be saved.

Twenty-two years ago her block wasn’t historic. It was just run-down.

The downzoning sounded harmless enough and, according to the local paper, there was little opposition. So they downzoned part of a few blocks, including Kathryn’s. It was called a victory for the mayor and the “quality of life,” and the local paper reported it that way--as if the quality of life were as trivial as crossing the Coronado Bridge in two minutes instead of three.

Kathryn never had any plans to build condos. But even so, the right to use that land was her property. Real as money in a bank. Nobody can deny that.

But the Coronado City Council took that from her--without one dollar of compensation. The only difference between the Coronado City Council and a common thief is that the City Council claims to have a better excuse.

Coronado is not alone. In the name of historic preservation, growth management and a host of other excuses, property rights in San Diego County are being trampled in a way that would make a Third-World dictator blush.

We should be worried about the casual way that property rights are taken away from people like Kathryn. Violent criminals walk the streets because some of our policemen are not constitutional lawyers. But people who save and invest are routinely deprived of their human rights by a whimsical government, and not a civil eyebrow is raised.

The person who lectured Kathryn on the historic value of her home skipped the chapters in her history book about property rights and the American Revolution. This wasn’t historic preservation, it was fear of the future.

Is the American Revolution over? If so, it’s time for another.

If we are going to put property rights up for a vote, maybe we should put our other rights up for a vote too. Like freedom of the press, for example. Maybe then the Coronado Journal would not be so quick to say that a loss of a basic human right is really a victory.

There’s no question that we should influence how our communities grow. But let’s not use the rhetoric of growth management as an excuse for destroying human rights. Maybe there are extraordinary cases where government should be allowed to take private property. But no matter what the reason, why shouldn’t they have to pay for it?

Six months after she retired, Kathryn had a stroke and is in a wheelchair. But she’s not really too upset about the action of the Coronado City Council.

You can’t be a secretary in the Navy for 20 years without learning to tolerate idiots.