My understanding is that this only applies if there’s no other way for the neighbor to access their own property. If the property owners can access their property from any other way (for example, from the city streets), there’s no obligation for a landowner who owns the back of the property to allow them to have a second access point.
Does my backyard neighbor owe me the right to cut across his back yard to access mine? No. I have a driveway that connects to a city street.
On the chaos angle, I’d imagine that some of those homes have built backyard gates that allow them direct private access to that park. If someone were to buy up that strip they could cut that off and basically extort each homeowner for access. It’s possible that the homeowners could claim some sort of “I’ve used this land for 20 years for access to the park argument,” but that would involve individual claims, expense, and a general PITA legal mess. And depending on the locality, it may require you to prove that you’ve done improvements to the property and a whole host of other PITA things.
Best case for those homeowners is to pay a couple of thousand each to buy the lot and come to an agreement among themselves on subdivision and/or collective maintenance and access rights.
My understanding is that this only applies if there’s no other way for the neighbor to access their own property. If the property owners can access their property from any other way (for example, from the city streets), there’s no obligation for a landowner who owns the back of the property to allow them to have a second access point.
Does my backyard neighbor owe me the right to cut across his back yard to access mine? No. I have a driveway that connects to a city street.
On the chaos angle, I’d imagine that some of those homes have built backyard gates that allow them direct private access to that park. If someone were to buy up that strip they could cut that off and basically extort each homeowner for access. It’s possible that the homeowners could claim some sort of “I’ve used this land for 20 years for access to the park argument,” but that would involve individual claims, expense, and a general PITA legal mess. And depending on the locality, it may require you to prove that you’ve done improvements to the property and a whole host of other PITA things.
Best case for those homeowners is to pay a couple of thousand each to buy the lot and come to an agreement among themselves on subdivision and/or collective maintenance and access rights.
That’s exactly what I would do - Get the neighbors to chip in and buy the lot to parcel up and add to our yards.