Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1681

Carbon of a letter from Heath to R. B. Wright, Vice President and Manager, Bank of America, Santa Ana, California

October 10, 1959

Dear Mr. Wright:

    Many, many thanks to you for your favors and for sending me one of the lease forms used by the Irvine Company.

     I notice that the lease follows the habitual line of securing to the landlord every possible immunity and exemption from liability of any kind while giving the tenant nothing but the naked right of possession, so far as the landlord is concerned, and leaving the tenant fully exposed and unprotected against taxation and even expropriation and dispossession or any other form of violence — so far as the landlord is concerned. The lease does not carry any covenant of “quiet possession,” even against any acts or neglect on the part of the landlord himself, not to mention the acts or depredations of any other persons or powers. Under such conditions the land is of but little serviceability to the tenant and thus of only the least possible value to either party, and this is doubtless why there is so much land lying idle and so little rent paid. The lease is equitable, so far as it goes; the only trouble with it is its deficiency — that it is, on average, not very greatly to the interest and profit of either party.

     Yet the remedy is in the hands of the landed interest, once it is organized for it. For the sellers or lessors of properties and services can make sales or leases of properties and services only so far as they are able to offer and ready to supply them to the purchaser or lessee. That is why the seller or lessor, in formal deeds, is always described as “the party of the first part.” The seller must first prepare for and then find his market, especially any market for new things; his customers will not go looking for him. And the landlord, as is evident in a hotel, can obtain rent only in proportion to the services, benefits and exemptions that he stands ready to confer and not according to the exemption from taxes or other liabilities that he secures for himself.

     Politics and business — the Iron Rule, unilateral, and the Golden Rule, reciprocal — are completely antithetical. So far as either of them prevails the other relatively declines. At about the end of the eighteenth century land ownership emerged out of feudalism just as commerce emerged out of piracy. It is now chiefly defensive but moving towards a vast further and this time a positive transition that is but little realized yet is evident in many ways. /Sentence? check original/ In the day and to the degree that land ownership widely organizes itself and enters into the business of providing public benefits, exemptions and services to the tenants and general inhabitants of its properties, it will evoke the highest revenues from them and thus build magnificent values for themselves. Political administration based on taxation and other forms of violence and compulsion and creating no values will then correspondingly recede. Public authority exercised through consolidated community land administration is (or will be) unlike any kind of political authority in that the land-owning organization can profit and maintain itself only by serving and prospering and not by ruling the occupants of its properties.

     The enclosed printed materials, if you find them interesting, may give you much more detailed insight into the general principles and the high hopes for the future that are involved.

     I am planning to leave here about the second week in November, with short stop-overs in Chicago and Colorado Springs, for Southern California where arrangements for faculty talks and discussions at various colleges are being made. I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you again.

     Again thanking you for your letter and for the enclosure that it contained,

                   Sincerely yours,

 

Enclosures:

 

Property in Land Explained

Administration of Property as Community Services

Questions for the Consideration of Land Owners

Notes on the Organization of Real Estate

Distinguished Appreciations

Sampling the Reviews