One of the staples of liberal hand-wringing is a need for "affordable housing." Last year, the standard liberal solution -- more government spending -- was proposed in a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington, in a report billed as a "new vision."...
I have warned many times of the dangers of homeowner's associations (HOA's). As I speak around the nation on the subject of "Sustainable Development," an environmental term intended to disguise the elimination of property rights, inevitably someone from the audience...
Rent controls don’t work, and its advocates know it.
Zoning proponents have presented zoning as the solution to many of the "problems" confronting Houston. At a time when the nation, and indeed much of the world, is rejecting government programs as the solution, zoning advocates endorse a massive government program as...
In the months since the November 1993 zoning referendum, zoning advocates have launched a number of accusations against their opponents. Zoning opponents, pro-zoners said, were dishonest and unprincipled. They resorted to lies, misrepresentations and scare tactics to...
The purpose of zoning, and its sole reason for existing, is to give government control over the use of all land within the community. While the rightful owner remains responsible for that property, the government will determine how that property is used. Under zoning,...
The National Heritage Areas program is an expensive, insidious attempt by non-governmental organizations and federal agencies to impose land use controls and zoning mandates on unsuspecting local communities.
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the case of George Washington University v. District of Columbia, upholding the District's zoning restrictions on GW's land use. The case was by no means a landmark decision, yet the...
Should a random passersby be able to dictate the color of your house?
A black man waiting at a bus stop called to me as I was bicycling down the street: "You're the first black man I have seen over here in a long time." "It will be a long time before you see the next one," I said, and we both laughed. In a deeper sense, it was not...
While Senator Barbara Boxer is trying to get the federal government to declare more than two million acres in California off-limits to development, California's other Senator, Diane Feinstein, has already brokered a deal that takes 16,500 acres off-limits. That's...
Politics, according to an old adage, is "the art of the possible." But, during election years especially, politics has increasingly become the art of the impossible. What politicians promise to all the various groups adds up to more than anyone can possibly deliver....
Despite the fanfare of a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington, a very old and hackneyed set of proposals was unveiled as a "new vision" for the creation of "affordable housing." The speech was by Richard Ravitch, co-chairman with former...
Too many people who talk about a lack of "affordable housing" seem to think that this is something the government must build or subsidize. It never seems to occur to them that government activity is itself one of the biggest reasons for housing being unaffordable. Nor...
A RECENTLY published housing study says: "San Francisco is one of the densest large cities in the U.S." That is true in both senses of the word "dense." Nowhere are San Franciscans more dense than when talking about housing -- especially that perennial will o' the...
Fraud is so inherent to the operation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that "HUD Scandal" might as well be one word. The latest hudscandal involves a feel-good program (what else?) for cops and teachers. Since 1997, police officers have been...
The obvious makes headlines in California. Maybe this shows that a sense of reality or common sense is not something that can be taken for granted among Californians. A recent headline stretching across the top of the front page announced that "Population dwarfs...
The Coming to the Nuisance Doctrine is the only objective means of determining who has the right to continue using his property in the event of a nuisance. If zoning is to be replaced, therefore, it must be replaced with the Coming to the Nuisance doctrine. Since it...
"Coming to the Nuisance" means exactly what it sounds like: if a property owner is using his property so as to cause a nuisance to another property owner, then the property owner who was the earlier to start his particular use is the one who has the right to continue...
The proponents of zoning claim that such initiation of force is necessary against developers to prevent the occurrence of nuisances.A "nuisance" is defined as the effect from an activity on others which unreasonably interferes with another's lawful use of property, or...
Real estate developers have good reason to feel cannibalized when they attempt to develop something today.Building permits for their projects are often exceedingly difficult to secure, requiring thousands of dollars in architect's and attorney's fees, and months (if...
The interstates were never the result of some individualistic, egoistic ‘love of the private automobile’, but rather of anti-capitalist, mixed-economy politics straight-up: the initiation of physical force for the sake of the greatest good for the greatest pressure group.
Urban Renewal disfigured cities because of the introduction of eminent domain into the land development process.
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