The New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized about a
N.J.
mayor, like your crazy uncle, calls affordable housing a ‘socialist scheme’.
Well, yes, it is--but. The issue is what we in
NJ have come to call Mount Laurel, the town whose restrictive zoning practices
led to a state Supreme Court ruling that required every town to provide for its
“fair share” of “affordable housing” through its zoning policies. That ruling
dealt with a legitimate injustice, but danced around the basic issue--property
rights (See my NJ's
"Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!).
This editorial is an interesting twisting of
language, and points up the importance of properly defining our terms. “This isn’t magic,” writes the
Star-Ledger:
It’s exclusionary zoning laws. It’s keeping housing values high
and property taxes artificially low, by using home rule powers for selfish
financial goals. It’s zoning out anything that doesn’t provide big revenue –
the schoolchildren-breeding, communist rabble.
Such abuses over the past few decades have forced other towns in
this county to shoulder greater expenses. This was why Mount Laurel was needed,
a landmark decision against discriminatory zoning practices that towns long
used to welcome the wealthy and keep out the poor.
Now, state rules require municipalities to build their fair share
of affordable housing, pushing back against enclaves of affluence and
opportunity hoarding, in which to send your kid to the best public schools, you
have to buy an expensive house.
The mayor calls the state’s interference in its
zoning policies “socialistic”--a complete inversion of the truth. What is
socialist is this from the Star-Ledger:
If you work hard, you should be able to afford a home; it’s the
American Dream. Yet thanks to growing income inequality, the path to the middle
class is much
harder to climb today than it was
decades ago.
I posted these comments, edited:
Socialism is the
subordination of the individual to the group (collectivism) imposed through
governmental force by all-powerful central planners (totalitarianism), and
geared to a collective moral vision of how socierty should be “shaped.”. What
is not socialist is builders building housing on their own land for sale to
willing consumers at mutually agreed pricing. Zoning boards refusing to grant
permission for such housing, allegedly in the “interests” of “the community,”
are mini-socialist dictatorships. There could be valid concerns about
development, such as substandard roads or stormwater runoff, that can justify
stopping a development unless these concerns are mitigated. But exclusionary
zoning is legalized discrimination; i.e., mini-socialism.
Of course, it’s ridiculous to
say “If you work hard, you should be able to afford a home.” The wealth
one earns is determined by how much economic value one creates as determined by
how much or how many others are willing to pay for it. Hard work is important.
But it is not the determining factor. The American Dream is the freedom to work
and trade and keep what you have earned. It is not an automatic guarantee that
someone will provide you with a home you can afford.
But if someone is willing to
build you that home, some zoning board should not have the power to stop them.
The Mount Laurel ruling attempted to correct
wrongful exclusionary zoning policies, thereby replacing local mandates with
state mandates. There should be no mandates. And none would be required if
property rights were respected in this state.
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