'Land Grabbers' reifying deeds, overwhelming old property owners

December 30, 2008

Anonymous The Laurel Leader-Call Tue Dec 30, 2008, 09:00 AM CST

To the editor:

What some Jones Countians are witnessing lately is a growing trend of surveyors — on behalf of financial institutions, real estate appraisers/consultants, land speculators, prospectors, land developers, timber companies, shysters, “land grabbers,” “land pirates,” and “land sharks” — establishing new boundary lines across old properties that are conflicting adversely and vastly with original lines recognized by old property owners for many decades as far back as 1919, when chains were used in marking off parcels of land.

This pattern of encroachment, property seizure and “land grabbing” appears to be rife in Tawanta where the owners are poor, small parcel owners, very old, absent and not occupying the property, or unaware of this current exercise of a type of “ex post facto” practice based on new aerial mapping and surveying techniques that are putting new boundary lines in place. This practice, in some cases, attempts at shifting boundary lines for miles where extensive development is occurring, whereby the act of overrunning old, well-established lines, ostensibly, is designed to satisfy the objective of “land grabbers,” developers or others of the aforementioned ilk. It is an unscrupulous process of establishing new lines — shifting boundaries — that vacate parcels of land originally enclosed within the old, original lines which should be “grandfathered,” i.e. protected from the new aerial mapping and surveying techniques, which disadvantage and undermine the poor and the elderly.

Interestingly, however, these “ex post facto” boundaries are creating inroads by large real estate firms and international land and timber entities that — like a pyramid scheme — from no readily perceptible origin, start manufacturing deeds and conveying the “newly” marked properties that their surveyors have “shaved off” from originally established old boundaries. The new lines create vacuums, and the machinators in the scheme reify deeds for this abstract, based on the new lines, describing the “shaved off” property within the context of old deeds and began conveying it within the circle of “operators” in order to get it filed for record, based on aerial mapping and new surveying techniques.

A case in point is the development of things along Shiloh Church Road in Southern Jones County, where property boundaries, in one case, have been circumscribed since the early 1990s, recognized and well-established within those bounds. Intriguingly, enough, despite the fence, and well-identified corner markers, “land grabbers” have “swooped down” on this particular property, usurping it, predicated on a survey done by a Louisiana firm, which notes: “Survey performed without the benefit of a title opinion,” imparts the real estate appraisers and consultants firm.

And, the question, many in Tawanta are asking is” “From where did the firm get the deeds to the land?,” which is located in an old, historic Black enclave. Answer: Their deeds are conjured up like magic acts — sleight of hand, like pulling rabbits out of the hat. Once the newly “shaved off” parcels are circumscribed by the “new lines,” the deeds inherently pop us, duplicating descriptions in old owners’ deeds inducing “adverse possession,” which is an act of these “land sharks” that warrants investigation, because most “Tawantaians” are overwhelmed by the caprice of this land-grabbing juggernaut.

— Harvey Warren

Laurel

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