Tag: zoning

First, Stop Doing That

If a government’s taxes and regulations are making shelter ever more expensive, what should that government do instead?

Stop pushing the disastrous policies, perhaps?

Unlike some other governors who shall remain nameless (one of them rhymes with “DeSantis”), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin understands that you don’t make things better by making them worse.

In August, Youngkin bluntly told a state senate committee that Virginia homes are too expensive and that a major cause is government interference with the market: “unnecessary regulations, over-burdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The many bottlenecks include low-density zoning rules that permit only a single house per property. Arlington County, Virginia, is one local government working to reform zoning so that more houses can be built on a property.

In November, Youngkin proposed a Make Virginia Home plan to unravel many regulations. City Journal notes that although the plan is “short on details,” it’s a good start.

Under the governor’s plan, the state would streamline environmental reviews, investigate how to liberalize the state’s building codes and land-use and zoning laws, impose deadlines on local governments to speed up approvals of development, and give local governments incentives to adopt their own market-liberating reforms.

This agenda is indeed only a beginning. But it does recognize a major cause of sky-rocketing housing costs and what must be done to begin to reduce those costs.

That’s just Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets too much government

“m” Is for “Misnamed”

What does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration — more specifically, the state’s misnamed Department of Economic Opportunity (mDEO) — think it’s doing?

The town of Gainesville, Florida, has liberalized its zoning laws to legalize the construction of certain small apartment buildings.

Who knew that building any housing on property owned by developers or by persons letting developers build on their property was illegal to begin with? But better late than never, Gainesville.

Not so fast! says the reputedly pro-free-market but apparently also pro-central-planning DeSantis administration.

According to an mDEO lawsuit, it’s illogical “for the City to argue that by entirely removing the concept of lower density detached residential dwellings…it is doing anything more than helping provide housing to college students and higher income residents.”

Huh? Providing housing only for people who will use that housing! Via various voluntary market transactions!! Is there no end to human deviltry?

Of course, as Reason writer Christian Britschgi points out, increasing the supply of housing units of any type will tend to reduce the demand for all already-existing housing, lowering the rents of units, including low-end units, that developers may not be building at the moment.

I guess the folks at the mDEO aren’t especially ardent fans of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson.

And anyway, what about the inalienable right of anybody of any income level to make market arrangements to shelter themselves from the elements?

In the last few years, DeSantis has gained a good reputation, daring to resist the Big Government mob. Now he needs to resist that mob in his own administration.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies property rights

Zoning by “Outsiders”

“In recent years, there’s been a push to move zoning decisions further from the local level,” writes Matt Ray for Mises Wire — engaging in no small understatement.

“In 2019, Oregon passed House Bill 2001, making it the first statewide law to abolish single-family zoning in many areas. By expanding the state government’s jurisdiction to include zoning decisions previously handled by local agencies, the law entails an alarming centralization of state power.”

This trend is old, going back at least to the Progressive Era.

But the trend continues — “progresses” — and Oregon’s centralizing law has been “quickly followed by the introduction of similar bills in Virginia, Washington, Minnesota, and North Carolina,” Matt Ray explains. “Now President Biden is attempting to increase federal influence over local zoning.”

The problem should be obvious. Government land-use regulation by “zoning” is an awesome expression of rights-abridging power, usually becoming nothing more than what most regulations are: special-interest protection schemes, helping the in-crowd at the expense of “outsiders” (you and me, actually).

Most savvy people understand this in specific instances, but not generally, so when they see zoning they don’t like, they might leap to the notion that bad local regulations should be replaced by good state or federal regulators.

Trouble is, we have less ability to ensure that regulators in distant political centers aren’t captured by special interests or malign ideologues.

The only way out is a general rule-of-law approach, limiting all zoning powers. Barring that? Well, no matter how bad your city’s zoning, I wouldn’t trade it for zoning decisions from Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights too much government

Zoned Out

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 3, 2020
1 Comment on Zoned Out

There are ways of cultivating community standards without resorting to zoning and similar regulatory regimens by state and local governments. They have been studied, written about, and they can be found here and there around the country, though most famously in Houston, Texas.

But zoning’s the norm in urban and suburban communities.

Ask Marietta Grundlehner.

She had been running an online clothing boutique from her home in Fairfax County, Virginia, and has been forced to shut it down.

Well, a court has ruled that she must remove all her inventory from her home. You can have a home business in Fairfax, but not inventory of goods for sale.

Ms. Grundlehner had been earning, she said, about $30,000 a year as a “LulaRoe Fashion Retailer” in an industry billed by its online organizer as “social retail.” The ecommerce hub, lularoe.com, makes an enticing pitch for its business model: “Find your joy and fulfillment by creating a positive impact in your community.”

But it was a neighbor who turned her in and sicced the local government on her.

That Fairfax resident sure did not think she was having a “positive impact” in their community.

Grundlehner hopes for a regulatory change to save her business, but Christian Britschgi of Reason has a word for that battle: “uphill.”

Still, online businesses are on the ascendency. Too many run afoul of zoning laws. And online entrepreneurship being the wave of the future, local governments might want to forget their old gentrification utopianism and meet the real world, the place where people actually live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers too much government

Recognizing a Problem

Andrew Yang, zoning, land use, visionary, presidential, election,

Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has at least one good policy preference: he opposes tough land use and zoning regimes.

And he is not alone.

“Yang’s criticism of zoning is pretty close to what other Democratic primary candidates have said on the subject,” writes Chistian Britschgi at Reason. “Sens. Cory Booker (D – N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D – Mass.), and Amy Klobuchar (D – Minn.), and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro have all targeted restrictive local land use regulations as a cause of high housing costs.”

Mr. Yang’s website clarifies the problem: “Those who already own homes have made it significantly harder for those who don’t to recognize that dream. Through NIMBY (not in my backyard) and zoning laws, the ability of new housing to be built in certain areas has been impeded to the point where the vast majority of Americans can’t afford to live in the largest cities.”

But while Yang recognizes that zoning is best dealt with on a local and state level, his more famous competitors offer fixes, Britschgi notes, that “require the federal government to either spend more money or attach more regulations to the money it already spends.”

Here’s the bottom line: Several Democrats competing for the highest office in the land recognize government interference as the leading cause of the housing crunch and its high prices.

Yet, instead of fighting bad policies at the state and local source, they advocate more federal spending. And they most decidedly do not apply their housing regulation realism to other problems we face.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

San Francisco Obstructionism

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 3, 2019
1 Comment on San Francisco Obstructionism

San Francisco, homeless, zoning, housing, regulations

Bob Tillman wants to build a 75-unit apartment building in San Francisco.

He owns the property — a laundromat. He just wants to convert it. But although there are no good reasons why he shouldn’t, city officials and activists opposed to the property rights of developers have been blocking the project. Tillman has spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars just trying to get started.

His plight “encapsulates the political dysfunction that’s turning San Francisco … into an exclusive playground for the ultra-wealthy,” says Reason magazine.

Because of the government’s general antagonism to development, and specific policies such as rent control, much less housing is getting built in the city than would have been possible in a fully free market.

The population is growing quickly, but housing isn’t keeping up. Which results in unnecessarily high rents and housing prices.

None of this is shocking if you understand basic economics. The greater the supply of a good, the cheaper the price tends to be — all other things being equal. That qualification is important. If the supply of oranges doubles but everybody suddenly starts an all-orange-juice diet, orange prices may remain the same or even rise — but less than the price would have risen without the greater supply.

Many factors, including monetary factors, can affect the price of a good. All I’m saying is that if you want the benefits of more housing, including rents that are lower than they would have been without the new housing, you must build houses and apartment complexes.

Stop something from being built and, unfortunately, it won’t be there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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