Category: property rights

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ideological culture judiciary property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Who’ll Oppose the Quasi-Commie?

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, property rights

Should we expect a four-​year pitched battle?

I see one brewing between the new communist mayor of New York City and those judges who respect law and the U.S. Constitution.*

Some say that Zohran Mamdani, though on record admitting his goal of seizing the means of production, is technically not a communist. Well, if allowed to fully impose all he wants on New Yorkers, maybe that would amount to going straight to a fascist model of totalitarian governance — bypassing the Maoist-​Stalinist stage.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But we do know that Mamdani was quick to hire such advisors as housing czarina Cea Weaver, who has lamented home ownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” and declared property as such to be something regrettably long treated as “an individualized good” that now must be treated as a “collective good.”

If you don’t own your house as an individual and have a spare room (or half a room), and somebody needs a place to live, could a Mamdani-​and-​Weaver-​run Big Apple compel you to give space to a stranger that you don’t want around? If property becomes a “collective good” and all must cuddle in the warm bosom of the state-​managed collective, the answer must be: yes.

But New Yorkers may not be quite doomed.

Not, anyway, if there are enough judges like David Jones, who recently interfered with an attempt by the Mamdani administration to interfere in the sale of many rental properties owned by Pinnacle Group.

Mamdani’s office says they’ll keep trying. 

Of course they will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Or the New York State Constitution, for that matter: see §7 (a), which clearly states that “Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.” 

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political economy property rights regulation too much government

Too Damn High?

unintended consequences, renter, landlord, regulations, private property, property

It’s getting tougher to rent a place to live.

Applications now often entail fearsomely intrusive scourings of financial history. And, writes Jeffrey Tucker, “if you are unbanked or missed a payment at some point, you can forget it.”

This is about more than digital intrusiveness or the end of privacy. It’s about aversion to risk. 

The aversion may have many causes. Tucker stresses a factor that’s pretty glaring once you think about it: the federal government’s assault on private property rights during the COVID-​19 pandemic. Some tenants eagerly exploited a federally imposed moratorium on rent payment — plus ban on evictions — only finally stopped by a 5 – 4 decision by the Supreme Court. 

At the state level, evictions continued to be outlawed until 2022.

So property owners assume that they cannot at all count on government to be in their corner. If a tenant fails to pay rent, folks in government (who include the ones with guns) protect the person who cannot or will not pay his or her bills. 

The concern must be even more intense if an owner’s property is located in a town with a track record of demonizing landlords and in the process of launching further assaults on property rights. (Example: New York City, where high rents are now officially called rip-​offs.)

Landlords want to avoid tenants who would use any law or bureaucratic tendency to rationalize skipping rent payment. Since owners can’t count on government to protect their property rights, they are becoming ultra-cautious. 

That is why conscientious prospective tenants who may have a blot or two in their financial history are paying the price.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture property rights

Hot in New York City

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, property rights

Zohran Mamdani was not yet the new mayor of New York City when the city council signaled that it would serve as willing accomplice in his assault on fundamental property rights.

In December, the city council passed legislation that had been hanging fire for several years, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), to further limit New Yorkers’ right to use and dispose of their own stuff.

COPA would give “give certain nonprofits … an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale, before they hit the wider market.” The law pertains to buildings “with poor conditions or where an affordability provision is expiring.”

COPA’s advocates contend, as if this were a response to the objection about how the new law violates property rights, that it gives nonprofits an advantage in the housing market.

What happens if quite wealthy nonprofits with enough political pull make an offer that a property owner declines? Will the property owner have the right to say “I pass” and then make the property available for anybody to bid on?

If COPA is not dead on arrival, it will depress market prices as the city strongarms owners into making deals at lower-​than-​market prices. And I doubt that a Mamdani administration will simply playact at eroding and destroying property rights.

Mayor Mamdani took office yesterday, on January 1, 2026, dedicated to the idea of replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” It doesn’t portend to be a very good year for New Yorkers opposed to the heat of the looters’ madness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights regulation too much government

The Regulatory Flex

Gavin Newsom, YIMBY, California, Pacific Palisades

If you’re a homeowner devastated by wildfires, you may want to rebuild. Since you have also suffered a financial setback, especially if your property insurance was canceled just before the fire, you may also want to earn money by renting a part of your new home.

Such are the considerations that motivate some property owners devastated by last January’s conflagrations in California to want to build a duplex. 

So what’s the problem?

The governor is the problem.

That he’s listening to other property owners in your neighborhood — the Pacific Palisades — who dislike duplexes makes the problem worse. 

Your property is not their property, mind you. But they’re acting as if it were.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order letting cities ban duplex construction in neighborhoods affected by last January’s wildfires. A pro-​development group called YIMBY Law was willing to refrain from filing a lawsuit if the governor issued a new order to let property owners build duplexes after a year had passed.

But Newsom won’t budge. So YIMBY Law is suing. 

A spokesman for the governor says that letting owners build duplexes (on their own property) amounts to an “attack” on the Pacific Palisades and an undermining of “local flexibility to rebuild.”

“Local,” here, seems to mean the sum total of all neighbors who are loath to allow you to enjoy the flexibility of building on your own property. 

But the individual and his rights are as local as it gets. 

And reducing options, as a prohibition on building duplexes where single-​family homes once stood, is the very opposite of “flexibility.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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litigation property rights

Miami’s Property-​Grabbing Vice

Miami, property rights, permits, regulations

All Chad Tausch wanted to do was add a few rooms to his Miami home.

In many cities, homeowners need a permit to make such additions. But although the city had no problem with his proposed construction, it required something more than a permit fee: half of Tausch’s front yard — without even offering to pay for it. No land surrender, no permit.

The city has been making the same demand of other homeowners who need alteration permits. 

The city has a plan, a goal: Pile up land that the city might one day use to widen roads. The Institute for Justice (IJ) has identified “more than 1,000 homes threatened by this scheme across 66 streets.”

“The right to prevent the government from unlawfully taking your property is a right recognized from the very start of this nation,” says Suranjan Sen, an attorney with IJ. “The city of Miami cannot simply decide to take your property away because it wants it.”

Well, thus far, the city has thus simply decided. It’s been operating the scheme for years. The question is whether it’s constitutionally entitled to do so; obviously, no.

Tausch didn’t submit to the extortion. Instead, he turned to IJ for help in challenging Miami’s practice in court. As a result of the litigation, the city has waived the land-​for-​permit requirement in his case.

Victory! But what about all those other homes on the 66 streets, which remain in jeopardy?

Well, the Institute for Justice is continuing the lawsuit, seeking to liberate all Miami homeowners from the city’s sneaky scheme.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights tax policy

Tax Assessor, House-Nabber

Pacific Legal Foundation, tax law

In 1994, Scott Pung won exemption from a school tax. He died in 2004. But years later, a local tax assessor contended that his widow, now also deceased, should have submitted new paperwork to retain the exemption.

Pacific Legal Foundation observes that according to state law, “the exemption continues as long as family members continue to live in the home.… Based on her misreading of the law, the tax assessor retroactively denied the exemption for several previous years.”

The estate’s administrator, Mike Pung, got nowhere trying to explain things to the tax assessor. So he brought his case to the Michigan Tax Tribunal. The tribunal ruled in favor of the Pungs.

Didn’t matter. When Mike paid the property taxes for 2012, the assessor called it an underpayment, since payment for the tax that the Pungs did not owe had not been included.

Mike still refused to pay the school tax. So the county grabbed the home that it had assessed at $200,000 and auctioned it for $76,000 to recover the amount of that tax.

With PLF’s help, the Pungs ultimately received $73,000 of this amount, less than half the home’s assessed value. Now PLF is headed to the Supreme Court to make the case for further compensation.

Chances are good. Two years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed in other PLF litigation that local governments “are not allowed to abuse the tax system to take more from families than is owed.”

Or not owed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights property rights

The Everest of Theft

Civil forfeiture laws allow officers of the law to commit theft. Sometimes they have to return the money they stole. But they don’t get punished.

Under civil forfeiture, authorities can grab cash or other possessions without proving criminal wrongdoing and without making an arrest. Since 2000, though, a federal law has made the federal government liable for reasonable attorney fees when a victim “substantially prevails” in court.

This law enabled Brian Moore, a rap artist, to eventually obtain compensation for thousands in legal costs after he sued to recover the $8,500 taken from him by federal drug agents.

One day in 2021, Moore took this cash, which he had inherited from his grandfather, to the airport. He hoped to fund production of a music video in Los Angeles, his destination. He was thwarted.

Even after a judge ruled that Moore could get his money back, he had to keep fighting, now with the help of Institute for Justice, to be compensated for legal fees. Eventually, he won that battle too.

But he won only after wasting a lot of time and suffering a lot of anxiety because officers of the law, with no evidence of wrongdoing, treated a person carrying cash as guilty of something just for carrying cash.

It was like Mount Everest. The officers took Moore’s stuff because it was there. 

And they knew what they were doing. Such conduct should be punishable. If it were, it wouldn’t happen so often.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture property rights too much government

The Big Decommodification

Mamdani, New York City, public housing, socialism, communism

Tired of that rundown shack you live in — for which each month you must cough up the rent money or a mortgage payment? No doubt, you’re chomping at the bit for the chance to move into clean, spectacular, state-​of-​the-​art government housing.

Well, you’re in luck! That is, if you live in New York City.

You see, on Tuesday evening, Sean Hannity informed his Fox News audience that Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ mayoral nominee, has a “plan to slowly eliminate home ownership in New York City.”

“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full decommodification of housing,” Mamdani declares in a 2021 video for the Gravel Institute. “In other words, moving away from the status quo, in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market.”

He says, “We’ll have to go beyond the market.”

That “has to be” the solution? Why? Because Mamdani’s socialist/​communist dogma dictates that government should be the provider of all shelter? The “decommodification” must be “full” and complete. No private home can be permitted to be bought or sold … or lived in anymore.

Surely that would solve our problems.

The democratic socialist suggests that the government “gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership,” urging the city to “fully commit to a new era of social housing … using our wealth to build beautiful, high-​quality social housing projects that offer good homes and strong communities to everyone.”

Yes, taxpayers, get ready to invest in the sparkling future of public housing. Cabrini-​Green here we all come! 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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litigation property rights U.S. Constitution

The Stealing Goes On

eminent domain, theft, law

“On March 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to take up the case of Bowers Development, LLC. v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency Et. Al.,” writes Conner Drigotas, “a decision that allows the practice of legalized theft through eminent domain to continue throughout America.”

This is not good news, as Mr. Drigotas explains. “In that case, Bryan Bowers had asked the Justices to review a ruling from the Supreme Court of New York that allowed Utica city officials to take land on which he had a contract to build and give it to a different private corporation for a separate construction project.” Mr. Bowers had “hoped to stop government officials from using force to pick winners and losers in the construction industry.” But it was a no go.

Politicians and bureaucrats love to grab other people’s property, under cover of “the public interest.” But their “public interest” is nothing more than a thin disguise for helping some individuals (often contributors to politicians’ campaigns) at the expense of others.

“With their denial of Bowers, Justices continued to show support for one of the most hated and notorious decisions to come out of their lofty chambers: that of Susette Kelo v. New London, Connecticut,” explains Drigotas. The Kelo case, often mentioned here, remains the ruling precedent, the government’s license to steal. Its loose construction of what can be regarded as in “the public interest” is a big part of the problem. 

Sadly, the courts have so far refused to rein in government eminent domain abuse. And voters have little sway upon the judiciary. And our representatives, our first line of defense, have also declined to stand up for basic justice and decency.

What to do? Remember that your representatives will soon be on the ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights regulation

Death of a Cemetery

property rights, meadow, cemetery, graveyard

Not everything worth fighting for, or against, is being taken up President Trump and Elon Musk. There are other battles. For a moment, at least, let us direct our attentions closer to home to consider the causes taken up by, say, the Institute for Justice and Pacific Legal Foundation.

Unlike a taxpayer-​funded NGO, always on the march to push big government or social decay, these organizations go to bat for people around the country who are being abused by local governments. 

As an example, take a current IJ case, Brooks Township in Michigan, which has been struggling to prevent Peter and Anna Quackenbush from opening a business: a cemetery. 

This was to be a “green” burial forest that the township board blocked because it disliked the idea.

After losing a court fight over a proposed ban of all new cemeteries as a way to block Peter and Anna’s particular cemetery, the township is now seeking to impose an ordinance dictating that “No new cemetery shall be created, installed, constructed or instituted … unless a written cemetery permit has first been approved and issued by the Brooks Township Board under this Ordinance.”

In other words, a de facto ban by a Board that has made clear its determination to stop Peter and Anna from opening a cemetery on their own property. If this ordinance is allowed to stand, no permit will be issued to them. It’ll be the end of the cemetery. 

Worth fighting against.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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