Tag: zoning

Categories
property rights too much government

In the Zone

You’re a businessman. You see a need for low-​cost apartments. A property owner is happy to sell you the plot on which the complex may be built. The local senior housing center has a long waiting list, so your units would clearly be snapped up just as soon as available.

Everything’s a go, except … your project is against the law. A zoning law. Therefore, you are out of luck, as are the persons who would rent from you.

Such bans don’t proliferate in a vacuum, of course. Enforcement of zoning laws is often ardently demanded by the residents of the neighborhoods in which developers wish to build.

That’s what happened a few years back in Darien, Connecticut, where townsfolk were up in arms over a proposal to build condos for seniors. Residents felt entitled to forcibly prevent others from moving in. (It is dangerous to play with fire, though. Zoning laws can be used against insiders as well as outsiders. Some Darrien dwellers recently learned, for example, that the eaves of their homes were “too big” for regulators’ tastes.)

Another zone-​ified town mentioned in John Ross’s review of Lisa Prevost’s new book Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate is Ossipee, New Hampshire, where workers sometimes live in tents to save on rent. The zoning code prohibits the building of new apartment buildings.

Observes Prevost: “The market is hungry for apartments, condominiums, and small homes, if only zoning restrictions would get out of the way.”

Of course, “the market” is simply shorthand for the needs of lots of people, and the freedom to meet those needs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Pitchfork Rebellion

What if they threw a rebellion and everybody came?

Anything you do these days can get you in trouble with regulators, from serving water without the proper liquor license to (I kid you not) throwing a birthday party without the proper happiness-​making license.

But being harassed for doing peaceful things with your own property isn’t about whether you’ve obtained the many licenses “required” to do them. It’s about whether you’ve caught the attention of some vindictive and cortex-​deficient bureaucrat.

When Martha Boneta hosted a birthday party for a friend’s daughter on her Virginia farm, she forgot to get a birthday-​party-​for-​little-​girls permit; the county noticed; the county threatened fines. Zoning Adminstrator Kimberly Johnson went further, though, ordering Boneta to stop selling produce grown on her land.

Boneta finds it “rather odd” she’s being singled out, when so many Virginia farmers do likewise. Actually, she’d obtained a permit to sell produce, but since then the county’s regulations have grown more complicated. (Bureaucrats can grow things too!)

Supportive local farmers conducted a “pitchfork protest” outside the Board of Zoning Appeals. Alas, Boneta lost her appeal, but will pursue the case with the farmers’ help and that of the Institute for Justice. The travesty has also caught the attention of a local Tea Party group. Indeed, several of the “pitchfork farmers” are also members of the Tea Party chapter in Northern Virginia.

I didn’t obtain a permit to wish them all Good Luck, but I wish it anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Oysters In, Soup Out

Oysterville Sea Farms in Oysterville, Washington — a small, coastal town that some of you may know from wordplay author Willard Espy’s memoirs — is in danger. The business has long sold soup and t‑shirts and other items to tourists, as well as books, knives and buoys “since the 1970s,” according to a local paper. But Pacific County is putting the kibosh on all that. It turns out that the business isn’t zoned for retail sales. 

“I’m really puzzled,” says the owner, who doesn’t see why the county would turn on a thriving business in the midst of a depression. He’s had to lay off six of his ten employees.

Considering that the county is just fine with his wholesale business, much of the complaint does seem a tad over-​the-​top. Indeed, the sea-​food wholesale biz is nothing if not noisome, and this operation has been a going concern at that location since the 1930s. 

I understand that zoning laws are often justified on property rights grounds, to defend neighbors against nuisances and the like in a consistent way. But there’s been a lot of research showing that zoning is usually just a means to reduce competition and deliver favors to some at the expense of others.

The complaint that inspired the crackdown was anonymous. In court, one sees one’s accusers. In regulation, one does not.

Finally, it is somewhat amusing, in a dark sort of way, that this business is being crippled by a “Department of Community Development.” Great job, guys.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Markets Without Mauling

Bribery, insider deals, political influence — must this be how we do business?

No.

Horror stories abound, featuring developers and governments in dark collusion, grabbing stunned innocent persons’ private property. This corrupt, banana-​republic way of getting things done hardly serves the public interest. It serves, instead, the dealmakers and the politicians. Not many others.

Is there any way to expand your business other than by unleashing unfriendly bureaucrats and politicians on people who possess what you want? Well, yes, there is. 

Former ABC news correspondent — and now Fox Business channel star — John Stossel, observes that cities like Anaheim, California, have figured out how to allow development to proceed without systematically trampling on property rights. In Anaheim, zoning and other regulations have been relaxed, making it easier for businesses to go where they want to. But also easier to expand by staying where they are.

If an owner doesn’t want to sell his property to make way for a project, a developer must build around him. Despite this heretical reliance on voluntary cooperation and respect for the rights of others, however, Anaheim has not withered away. 

Stuff still gets done. 

Amazing? Not really. This was once the usual American way. It’s only become unpopular … with politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Petition Rights and Wrongs

Quite a theory: No law is unfair if only that law is being followed.

According to an election board attorney in Howard County, Maryland, tossing 80 percent of the signatures on a voters’ petition does not add up to a “right-​to-​vote case” at all. Gerald Richman says the board merely “[carried] out the dictates of the law.” He denies that “fundamental fairness is an issue.”

The proposed referendum aimed to stop a rezoning in Howard Country permitting the building of larger grocery stores. I’m skeptical of zoning as an instrument to protect citizens and their property, so if I resided in Howard County, I would not likely vote Yes. 

But as things stand now, I also would not be allowed to vote No.

Two months after the election board okayed the first batch of signatures, the board turned on a dime and began massively nullifying signatures, essentially killing petition rights unless voters can win them back in court.

Were the tossed signatures deemed fraudulent? No. The only “problem” is trivial variations between how voters signed their names on the petition and how their names are registered. Things like omitting a middle initial. An attorney for the residents notes that under such restrictive requirements, the signatures of Ben Franklin and John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence could not have been counted.

That notion of fairness is one King George would’ve been mad for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights property rights too much government

California Crackdowns

A government agency practicing extortion … who’d’a thunk it?

In 1987, the California Coastal Commission lost a Supreme Court case about its attempt to demand beach access from property owners in exchange for building permits. One justice said it was practicing extortion.

Nevertheless, the agency still dictates what land owners must do to receive permits — which are required even to move piles of dirt around. In one instance, the unelected Commission ordered that most of an owner’s land be given over to farming. The Pacific Legal Foundation is fighting this insanity in court.

Richard Oshen decided to produce a documentary about the CCC after friends told him how it was interfering with their own property. The agency had even gone so far as to prohibit them from tape recording its inspection of their land.

Oshen spent years conducting interviews. He even managed to film a conversation with CCC head Peter Douglas in which Douglas downplayed the agency’s dictatorial powers. But Reason magazine reports that Douglas now wants to revoke the permission he gave to use that interview. He’s also demanding to see a pre-​release version of the movie — either to try to prevent its release or just on general principles of harassing critics of tyranny.

I’ve reported on the commission before. It behaves as a kind of environmentalist mafia operating under color of law — and clearly the CCC is no fan of free speech.

Let’s hope that Douglas fails, Oshen succeeds, and California land owners get a reprieve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.