Somebody’s tax dollars at work:

Since April, homeowners selling a condo in Los Angeles have had to pay a $150 fee to the city under a 33-year-old affordable-housing ordinance that has never produced a single affordable unit.

Few condominium owners know about the new fee or the arcane law, which gives the city the right of first refusal to buy most condos built after 1974.

Without money to purchase units, the city has always waived its right. But, short on cash, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles voted earlier this year to begin charging condo sellers $150 for the waivers.

“It’s ironic that an ordinance that was well-intended to foster affordable housing in the city actually has new fees now that are raising the cost of housing,” said David Kissinger, director of governmental affairs for the South Bay Association of Realtors.

Ironic, yes. But no shock. Then consider the poor guy who, nine years ago, bought a house that encroached four inches on his neighbor’s turf.

He’s settled that issue with the neighbor, but the city has rules that must be obeyed.

…the city only caught the problem in 1997, nine years after the Duttons moved in. And the problem now has the Duttons in a legal battle against a neighbor and City Hall.

“We moved into this house for nine years, and wham, they whack us with this,” Paul Dutton said in a recent interview. “We have been doing our due diligence by working with the city … and all the way to the City Council, they’re saying, `You’re at fault.’ We’re tired of that.”

In the years since the problem was caught, there has been litigation, countless meetings with city officials and more than $106,000 in lawyers’ fees as the Duttons attempt to make the extension legal.

Their last stop now is the City Council, which has to decide whether to grant the family a zoning variance to allow the room to stand or reject it and potentially open the case to still more litigation.

…”We are a city of law,” Mayor Ara Najarian said during the July10 hearing as he urged the Duttons to start over and rebuild. “Variances should only be granted in the most extreme of circumstances.”

Considering that many LA municipalities forbid their police from enforcing federal immigration laws, this does seem a bit picky.