Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values. – AYN RAND
Walk through almost any beloved old Manhattan neighborhood and you quickly run into a strange fact: much of the city people love would be illegal to build today. In 2016, The New York Times published an analysis titled “Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today.” Using data from Quantierra, the […]
End rent control. Legalize housing investment. Let prices tell the truth. Let builders build. Let landlords maintain their buildings. Let tenants freely move. Let New York grow again.
We don’t have as much housing as would be necessary to keep housing costs low because it’s illegal. Governments manufacture scarcity by wrapping building permissions in red tape.
One of the chief weapons used by the advocates of altruism is guilt.
The political, economic, and moral case for a free market in housing.
Modern-day Luddites oppose a different type of progress—gentrification.
Historic preservation is a pretense for dictating how others may or may not use their property.
To this day, private companies are castigated for “predatory lending.” Yet, it was government policy that incentivized loans to those who couldn’t afford to repay them.
Widespread racism can only occur when government mandates it.
Government officials love to loudly proclaim the great benefits that tenants will enjoy by restricting and controlling landlords. The folly of their schemes will become clear when they discover that the landlord shrugged.
Like all forms of subsidies, the “right to return” takes from some—taxpayers—to provide benefits to others—low-income households.
The report on eviction filings looks at groups, not individuals. Consequently, it fails to identify the context for the individuals who were evicted.
If we unleash the swarm, if we restore freedom to property owners, we will see an immense increase in housing production. Property owners could convert single-family homes into duplexes, build a cottage or “granny flat” in the back yard, or do any number of other things to increase the supply of housing.
Housing activists think that the solution to the housing shortage is to shackle housing producers.
End the “Lottery Life” in housing and watch market entrepreneurs do the rest.
Nuisance is highly contextual. An action that constitutes a nuisance in one context may not be a nuisance in another context.
Economic power is founded on voluntary trade. Political power is founded on physical force.
We may not always like the alternatives that we face, but choosing between unattractive alternatives isn’t force.
On the one hand, housing advocates and public officials decry the state’s housing shortage. On the other hand, they continue to advocate for more controls and restrictions to be piled onto the shoulders of housing producers.
The Progressive framework relegates the individual to second-class status. The collective reigns supreme.
“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.”
For a 1,000 square foot apartment—smaller than many cities allow without expensive variance permit processes—a developer would need to charge at least $2,750 per month just to break even.
What is the fundamental issue is: monetary central planning – with its embarrassingly awful one hundred year track record with paper monies – or getting government’s direct or indirect hand off the handle of the monetary printing press.
The Crisis is Not Debt Default, But Too Much Government Spending
The essential moral case for finance that Brook and Watkins present is that finance is good by the standard of human flourishing.
Land prices skyrocket when the supply of land is artificially and drastically reduced, which means that housing prices become astronomical.
It is no coincidence that housing prices in coastal California began skyrocketing in the 1970s, when building bans spread like wildfire under the banner of “open space,” “saving farmland,” or whatever other slogans would impress the gullible.
Those who benefit from government coercion seldom like it when the gun is turned around and pointed at them. They have no hesitation to demand that government use compulsion for their benefit, but complain when compulsion is directed at them. As an example,...
The stated purpose of zoning is to control land use within a community to prevent “incompatible” land uses and to promote planning. Most Americans accept zoning as a “necessary evil” that prevents pawn shops and factories from operating in residential neighborhoods....
Most people accept building codes as a necessary government intervention. One Website states: Codes provide minimum standards for building construction in order to safeguard the public’s safety, health, and welfare. Another Website states: If we searched we could find...
In 2007, I served as a consultant to a group of citizens opposed to an attempt to bring zoning to Hobbs, New Mexico. During that time, I wrote a series of articles that were published in the local newspaper. This is one of those articles. In a referendum, zoning was...
In 2007, I served as a consultant to a group of citizens opposed to an attempt to bring zoning to Hobbs, New Mexico. During that time, I wrote a series of articles that were published in the local newspaper. This is one of those articles. In a referendum, zoning was...
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