There's a bit of a construction boom going on in
Theresa's (that's what we're calling her here) neighborhood. Once a quiet,
tightly knit neighborhood on the outskirts of a relatively small city, it had
recently been discovered by a new generation of buyers and developers looking
to invest in the next hot city neighborhood. By virtue of having been born and
raised there, Theresa had discovered the neighborhood long ago.
Some of the activity has involved people buying older
homes in a new neighborhood for themselves. Other activity has resulted from
developers buying older properties and either renovating them and flipping them
to sell or knocking them down and building larger, more modern units to sell.
While the activity has driven up the value of most of the
houses in the neighborhood, including Theresa's, it's also resulted in a lot of
noise and construction traffic during the week and often on weekends. Theresa
says she will be happy when the activity dies down.
For about a year, developers have been working on a
multi-family house behind Theresa's house. The backs of the two houses share a
private road, along with four or five other houses. Most of the homeowners keep
their trash cans out back and don't pay nearly as much attention to how the
area looks as they do with the area in front of their houses.
But the developers next door are hoping to charge a
premium price for the units behind Theresa's house and they're not sure
prospective buyers are going to love the idea of looking out onto random trash
cans and old porch stoops.
"The developer asked if he could attach a flower box
to the railing of my back porch," Theresa says. He's indicated that he'd
pay to have the flower box attached and also planted with flowers once it's
installed. Apparently, according to Theresa, he's asked the owners of other
houses on that shared road the same thing.
"I don't want to be a bad neighbor," says
Theresa. "But I don't want to have a flower box out there that I have to
keep up all the time. It's where I keep my trash." As long as the trash is
neatly secured, Theresa says she doesn't care as much how it looks behind her
house as she cares about the lawn and gardens in the front and side yards.
"He did offer to pay for it," she says.
"But would it be wrong to decline his offer?"
Of course it wouldn't be wrong to decline his offer. It's
her house and the right thing is to decide what to do and what not to do to it,
regardless of who pays. It's not Theresa's or her neighbors' responsibility to
tidy up so the developer next door can get top dollar for his new units.
But if Theresa or any of her neighbors always wanted a
flower box for their back stoop, there'd be nothing wrong with seizing the
opportunity to have someone else pay to install it and to plant the first round
of flowers, knowing they would be footing the bill for any flowers to come.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
