Exclusionary Zoning is Socialist

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.

Related Reading:

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

COAH, ‘Affordable Housing,’ and Zoning in NJ

More Freedom, not More Government, Will Solve New Jersey's "Housing Crisis"

How the Legal Quagmire over a Group Home in Readington Could Have Been Avoided

Last year, after having initially issued an approval, the township of Readington, NJ (where I live) retracted a zoning approval submitted by a company named Waypointe-High Focus Centers to open a group home or halfway house for the mentally disabled on Readington Road in Readington Township, New Jersey. The reversal followed resistance from local residents voicing concern about the danger the group home residents could pose to the community members.

Waypointe subsequently sued Readington over group home opposition, claiming the rejection violated federal and state law. I am not qualified to comment on the legalities involved. But I can comment on the philosophical premises involved.

From the article:

The suit states Waypointe residences are for 18- to 26-year-old young men “with mental illness and disabilities which significantly impair their judgment, their capacity to control their behavior and/or their ability to recognize reality.” The homes provide “highly individualized care, expert medical health treatment, personalized educational and vocational guidance and supported social integration,” the suit says.

I left these comments, edited for clarity:

The issue here is whether or not their is a reasonable expectation that the residents of the group home pose a threat to the physical safety and security of surrounding residents.

The quote above strongly indicates evidence that the answer is “yes.” These are young men, presumable of average strength for their age, who cannot exercise rational judgement, control their behavior, or grasp the difference between outside reality and their own mental fantasies. This is an explosive brew. What if one of these men imagines an innocent harmless child as a predatory lion, and attacks the child in what he believes is defending himself? You can conjure up any number of scenarios like this one, based on the description above. Ridiculous? Not when the “impaired ability to recognize reality” is coupled with the “impaired capacity to control their behavior.”

A lot has been said about the “rights” of the group home residents. Rights are principles sanctioning freedom of action in a social context. As such, rights have parameters: specifically, that one’s actions don’t infringe on the same rights of others. Thus, your right to live somewhere does not extend to being a physical threat to your neighbors’ wellbeing or enjoyment of their property. Any reasonable interpretation of the condition of these group home residents as acknowledged by Waypointe indicates substantial, ongoing, and imminent danger to surrounding residents—that these men are capable of any action at any time. No one has the right to choose who lives next to them, within the context of respect for the same rights of one’s neighbors. But everyone does have the right not to live in fear, based on an objectively defined threat, of their neighbors.

I cannot believe that the law sanctions a “civil right” to physically threaten the safety of your neighbors. (If it does, it needs to be repealed.) Whatever the law says, the residents and the township have strong moral case for opposing this particular group home. This is not about discrimination against the disabled. This is not about opposing the concept of group homes in general. This is about the government’s job to guarantee to everyone protection from physical aggression by others. The burden of proof, morally if not legally, is on Waypointe to prove that its patients are not a threat to their neighbors.

Another correspondent, adrianlane, replied to me:

You want to repeal the FHA.  Fine... but do it on your own damned dime.  Why must you people constantly be taking my tax money and spending it on your friggin lost causes???

I replied:

That’s actually a good point. I live in Readington and I don’t like my tax dollars going down the lawsuit drain either. I generally oppose zoning powers. But the towns have it and so are going to be dragged into lawsuits no matter which way they go.

But that is another issue. In this case, the town revoked the zoning permit when residents raised the issue of safety and security. My point is, unlike the Solberg Airport eminent domain case, this time the township is taking the right side of the issue. It’s terrible that Waypointe chose to sue rather than address the issues raised (at least that’s my impression).

Adrianlane went on to say:

The FHA and the ADA laws have been on the books for decades.  They allow disabled (read that as recovering addicts) a place to live no matter what.

Municipalities are stupid... really stupid to fight them because

1.  They lose.

2.  They pay for the lawyers

3.  They get hit with heavy punitive damages.

But hey... you all think I am supporting them.  Fine.  I am just telling you the law.  When it comes down on us hard I hope to not be a taxpayer here anymore.

One of the purposes of the court system is to mediate civil disputes. But bad law has corrupted the whole process. The municipality’s zoning power to approve or disapprove of property usage coupled with the obsession with legally stopping private discrimination has turned what should have been a private dispute between private residents and a private company into a monstrous lawsuit pitting government against government, taxpayer against taxpayer, and awarding a private company what amounts to Federally-backed quasi-extortionist powers to, as you say, “come down hard” on all of the residents of a township.

Meanwhile, the basic concern about safety that a court could readily resolve at minimal cost and without dragging uninvolved people into it is shoved aside. In a fully rights-respecting society, where there are no zoning powers and no anti-discrimination laws, Waypointe would be free to open group homes on their own property regardless of neighbors’ biases. However, neighbors would be free to challenge Waypointe based on legitimate concerns about safety affecting their own property, with the courts having the final say. Both sides would be on equal footing, would have to abide by the ruling, and no one else need be involved. Instead we have zoning, ADA, FHA; and homeowners who just want their safety concerns resolved left out in the cold. It’s a monstrous legal quagmire we’ve created in this country, and individual rights is the casualty.

--------------------------------------------------

Readington eventually “settled.” According to Hunterdon Review,

The Readington Township Committee, after being told by Township Attorney Richard Cushing that it had little choice, and had violated state and federal law by issuing a zoning permit for the home for the “developmentally disabled and mentally ill” and then revoking it, agreed to settle with the home’s management.

Related Reading:

COAH, ‘Affordable Housing,’ and Zoning in NJ

Man’s Rights—Ayn Rand

The Nature of Government—Ayn Rand

'Affordable' McMansions in NJ?

Like many states, New Jersey has an “affordable housing problem." And like other states, the problem is largely caused by government interference.

In NJ, the state requires local municipal zoning boards to “provide” for affordable housing within their borders. Not surprisingly, some towns may be gaming the system. That is the subject of a New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial. In How can some N.J. towns call McMansions affordable housing?, the Star-Ledger observed that some towns are classifying $500,000 and up homes as “affordable.” But as the Star-Ledger wryly asks, “What real estate agent is going to show a hairdresser a half million-dollar home?”

I left these comments, slightly edited for clarity:

We in New Jersey are all familiar with the Mount Laurel case. In 1070, Jacob’s Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopalian congregation in Mount Laurel, sought approvals to build 36 low income housing units on its own land. The town turned it down, highlighting the fundamental problem: It’s the zoning, stupid! The Mount Laurel episode led to lawsuits that resulted not in invalidating the zoning powers, but to the court ruling establishing the convoluted “affordable housing doctrine,” which requires towns to “provide ‘reasonable opportunity’ for the creation of affordable housing.” This,  in turn, led to 1985 legislation creating the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH).

How’d that work out?

In the 1980s, in my Hunterdon County hometown, a developer submitted plans to build a 2200 home project on three farms totalling over 500 acres. I thought it was a pretty darn good proposal. The homes spanned the entire price range from low income to McMansion. The main access road came off of a major highway, route 202, minimizing impact on local roads. The project was surrounded by natural buffers to soften the effect for the existing houses (mine included) bordering and facing the project. The developer even included building a school and giving it to the town, along with some open space.

The town turned it down, claiming that it had already met the COAH’s “affordable housing quotas.” The developer sued under what was then called the “builder's remedy.” The town won, and the three farms are now “preserved” at taxpayer expense. 2200 homes not built. Again, COAH and all, It’s the zoning, stupid!

Zoning is the major culprit, followed by regulations. Turn the page of this same Perspective edition of the Star-Ledger and you’ll find a Bloomberg article, What Makes Housing Too Expensive? Bloomberg reports, “The main barrier to housing construction in [coastal metropolitan areas like NJ] is local regulation -- zoning ordinances, environmental requirements, even affordable-housing rules.” These restrictions limit not only affordable home building, but all home building, driving up the cost of all housing, including older housing on the low price end.

Zoning is not the only cause of high housing costs. But it is an elephant in the room. Until local zoning power is vastly reigned in—I think zoning should be eliminated—so market forces can be allowed to work and property rights are protected as Jacob’s Chapel’s should have been, the problem can not begin to go away.

In reply to one correspondent who challenged me on my opposition to zoning, I answered:

No zoning doesn’t have to mean no protection for existing property owners from disruptive new development. I lived in Cranford, in a residential zone sandwiched between two commercial zones. The commercial zones came after we moved in. On one side, the boundary cut my block in half, so that my backyard bordered on factories. Two blocks the other way was a long-existing city dump, which was converted into a commercial/industrial park. Guess what? No problem coexisting with industry. The test should be whether new development violates existing property owners’ rights by physically disruptive consequences, not central planners’ trying to mold the “character” of the town to existing residents’ liking. Neither of the developments I cited above should have been blocked unless it could be proven that neighbor’s property rights would have been violated, which was definitely not the case. The burden of proof should be on those who want to block the developments.

Related Reading:

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

COAH, ‘Affordable Housing,’ and Zoning in NJ

Private Property Rights versus ‘the Power to Govern Land Use’

More Freedom, not More Government, Will Solve New Jersey's "Housing Crisis"

Instead of Affordable Housing Quotas, Reign in Zoning

New Jersey’s so-called “affordable housing policies” require each municipality in the state to provide its “fair share” of low and moderate income housing. This could be accomplished is a number of ways, but usually involved zoning for low and moderate income housing that requires builders to incorporate some percentage of such housing (usually subsidized) in their development plans.

But it can also allow municipalities to finance affordable housing in other communities in lieu of allowing building it in their towns. That practice, known as “Regional Contribution Agreements,” were subsequently outlawed. But with a recent court ruling increasing affordable housing requirements for towns, many mayors are seeking a reinstatement of Regional Contribution Agreements.

Some object. In Don't let N.J.'s wealthy suburbs block out black and Latino families, Star-Ledger Guest Columnists Richard T. Smith and Christian Estevez write:

We are deeply troubled by recent demands from mayors of wealthy towns for the reinstatement of Regional Contribution Agreements — New Jersey's modern-day version of red lining.

Before their abolition, these agreements allowed a few wealthy, overwhelmingly white towns, to avoid building their fair share of homes affordable to working families, seniors and those with disabilities. Instead, they used the funds to pay for repairs — many of them minor — to existing homes in poor urban communities. This allowed wealthy towns to avoid allowing 10,000 families to seek opportunities closer to jobs and schools and diverted $200 million away from the production of new homes for New Jersey families.

RCAs further concentrated poverty and reinforced longstanding patterns of racial and economic segregation, preventing poorer families — especially Latinos and people of color — from moving to thriving suburban communities with good schools and growing employment opportunities.

There’s truth to this. Unfortunately, Smith and Estevez go on to muddle their argument with statements on economic “gaps” and promotion of destructive policies like minimum wage increases. Worse, they avoid the basic problem: How is it right that towns even have the power to “avoid allowing 10,000 families to seek opportunities closer to jobs and schools?”

Before we tackle that question, let me say this.

The premise of this article is to categorize people according to race or economic status. That’s a horrible way to think of individuals. People shouldn’t be judged according to whom they happen to share their skin color or income with. But that’s exactly the implication behind talk of “gaps” among groups. What does this implication say about the many successful black and Latino individuals?—that their success doesn’t somehow measure up to whites because of some arbitrary group economic gap?

Worse, the constant talk of gaps among groups encourages people to measure their self-worth by comparison to others rather than their own character and results. This is psychologically and characterologically unhealthy, because such OCD (Obsessive Comparison Disorder) has the person constantly looking over their shoulder at the next guy, robbing him of rightful pride in his own accomplishments. My father once told me, “Don’t worry about what somebody else is making. Just worry about yourself.” It’s great advice. The whole collectivist focus on meaningless group gaps is degrading to actual individual human beings, their efforts, and their self-esteem.

That said, Smith and Estevez do have a point. Unfortunately, their solution is a different version of the original disease—government-imposed social engineering. That original disease is zoning. While overt legalized segregation ended decades ago, it is still being snuck in through the back door of zoning (although I believe that the segregation is primarily economic, not racial). Zoning, not prejudice, is the real problem. The power to control land use is a backdoor gateway to legalized segregation, which is more properly thought of as social engineering.

If we look back at the original Mount Laurel case, the fundamental problem can be clearly seen. When Jacob’s Chapel sought to build 36 garden apartments on its own property in Mount Laurel, which would have brought housing affordable to low income folks to the area, it was blocked by the township. The state Supreme Court, however, dropped the ball; it imposed housing quotas, unleashing decades of politically-charged housing conflict. If the court had simply overturned the zoning powers that enable such wanton discrimination, the housing market would have been largely freed up. Put another way, if the court had just affirmed private property rights, the Jacobs apartments would have gotten built, and that would have been that. No more would some mayor have been able to callously tell some future housing planner, as Mount Laurel Mayor Bill Haynes said to the African-American Jacobs congregation, “If you people can’t afford to live in our town, then you’ll just have to leave.”

Where people choose to live should be a matter of individual choice based on voluntary contractual agreements among landowners, builders, and consumers. No one should be able to use the state’s power of law—i.e., the power of the gun—as a means to engage in social engineering, whether based on race, economics, social status, or any other arbitrary criteria. This goes equally for utopian-minded activist groups seeking to impose housing quotas on local communities through state “fair housing” laws, and local community masterminds seeking to impose their idea of community character through powerful zoning boards.

Municipalities have no moral obligation to provide fair housing opportunities. Neither does the state. They simply have to get out of the way. To borrow a Clinton catchphrase, “It’s the zoning, stupid!”

Related Reading:

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

COAH, ‘Affordable Housing,’ and Zoning in NJ

Are "Diversity Maps" a Precursor to Forced Neighborhood Integration?

From 'Diversity Maps' to Forced Integration: Obama's Racist Housing Policy Masks the Real Problem—Lack of Free Markets

How Zoning and Other Government Policies Hamper Many Blacks’ Economic Progress

From my post From 'Diversity Maps' to Forced Integration: Obama's Racist Housing Policy Masks the Real Problem—Lack of Free Markets:

The problem is not racial discrimination as such. Zoning boards give bigots and other NIMBY interests the power to “segregate” neighborhoods and towns by force. Without such legal powers, builders would be able to build housing based on demand, wherever that demand my surface. The builders would be free to respond to the rational value choices of housing consumers. The racial makeup of towns might still occasionally not meet some bureaucrat's idea of “diversity.” But, given that the distribution of housing would be based on the free market, whatever housing patterns developed would be just and moral because it would be based on the voluntary choices and value judgements of free individuals contracting voluntarily with each other, without any coercive interference from government-empowered social engineers, local, state, or federal.

From the Washington Post article Black poverty differs from white poverty:

This data point — the share of poor people living in deeply poor places — gets at an important element of poverty that's obscured by citywide poverty rates. "The concentration of poverty is really about the spatial organization of poverty," Jargowsky writes. It captures how we've designed communities to pen poverty in, restricting many poor African Americans in particular to a limited number of neighborhoods.

"The term ‘concentration’ does in some way suggest that poor people are moving from all over the place into these neighborhoods, and they become teeming slums like at the turn of the century," Jargowsky says. "But it’s actually the opposite: People are moving out to the older suburbs, and people in the older suburbs are moving to the newer suburbs."

Concentrated poverty is getting worse because poor people — especially poor African Americans — are increasingly left behind. And a number of forces drive this pattern, including systemic discrimination, policies that have historically concentrated public housing and modern zoning laws that keep the poor out of wealthier communities.

In reading the Washington Post article, including related links, it’s clear that coercive, rights-violating government policies like Urban Renewal, eminent domain, the criminalization of drug use, affordable housing policies, and the like—in addition to zoning—have reeked havoc on black upward economic mobility.

Related Reading:

Eminent Domain- Always an Abuse

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

Why No Wall Street Prosecutions? The Villains Are All In Washington

From 'Diversity Maps' to Forced Integration: Obama's Racist Housing Policy Masks the Real Problem—Lack of Free Markets

In 2013, the Obama Administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) developed a rating system dubbed “diversity maps,” which would grade neighborhoods, towns, and regions according to their racial makeup. The purpose of the program, labeled “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,”  was to “allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory.”

In Are "Diversity Maps" a Precursor to Forced Neighborhood Integration?, I argued that the alleged racial discrimination and segregation a statistical analysis of towns and neighborhoods supposedly revealed, real or not, are rooted in rights-violating government policies and institutions—specifically, local zoning powers and the government’s public schools quasi-monopoly. I argued that a free market in housing and education, not more rights-violating, racist-tinged government action designed to correct the problems caused by those previous rights-violating policies, was the right solution.

The diversity maps are now being solidified into policy. True to statist form, the Obama Administration will use the funding and other powers held by HUD to coercively graft racial integration onto neighborhoods across the country. As Rachel Stoltzfoos reports for The DC Caller in Obama Orders Cities And Towns To Racially Integrate:

The Obama administration unveiled new rules Wednesday to rid the country of racially segregated neighborhoods by directing cities and towns to set goals for reducing segregation, and then regularly report their progress to the feds.

Communities nationwide will be given a series of questions designed to help them figure out whether racial bias is causing segregated neighborhoods, racial or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, unequal access to opportunity or disproportionate housing needs in their jurisdiction. They will be required to set goals related to that data and publicly report on their progress every three to five years.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development rule is intended to prod communities to meet fair housing standards established in the Fair Housing Act of 1986, by making previously unavailable or unreliable data accessible to the public, which could then use the data as an impetus for change.

The Fair Housing Act requires the government to not only eliminate racial discrimination in housing, but also to encourage racially integrated neighborhoods.

Obama’s new housing policy shows the danger of categorizing individuals according to their group characteristics—in this case, the color of one’s skin. Obama’s policy is unabashedly, unapologetically racist.

Entire towns and neighborhoods could be judged a product of discrimination merely according to statistics, implicitly and blindly smearing every inhabitant of those failing the test as racist. But I didn’t buy my house in a predominantly white township because of that. I bought my house for rational value reasons, such as because property was more affordable, a desire to live in a more rural area, relatively good schools, larger property. Never did the racial identity of the area’s inhabitants enter into our consideration. We moved into a township that happened to be predominantly white, not because it was predominantly white. Yet, according to HUD’s new rules, I’m essentially branded as a segregationist for my choice!

One wonders, under this drive for coerced racial “diversity,” whether one’s desire to choose a place to live will now be determined by the racial makeup of a particular area. For example, will a buyer will be forbidden from buying or renting a home of his choice based on whether his particular racial quota has been reached in that town? That’s no explicit part of HUD’s rule. But based on the logic of the premise behind “diversity,” and given HUD’s sweeping powers, who can credibly argue that such micromanagement won’t happen eventually? Remember the 1960s forced busing of schoolchildren to distant neighborhoods in the name of integrated schools?

Having said that, HUD’s new racist policies mask a genuine injustice—economic discrimination imposed by local zoning boards. An example of this is the infamous plight of Jacob’s Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopalian congregation in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

In 1970, Jacob’s Chapel sought to build a 36-unit apartment complex designed for low income renters on its land, but Mount Laurel’s zoning ordinance forbade it. In response, Jacob’s invited Mount Laurel’s mayor to discuss a resolution to the impasse with the congregation. But the mayor arrogantly told them, “If you people can’t afford to live in our town, then you’ll just have to leave.” This led to a series of court cases that resulted in the formation of the state Council on Affordable Housing, empowered to force towns to zone for a “fair share” of affordable housing: A statist solution to a statist institution.

The kind of government-enforced economic discrimination that Jacob’s Chapel ran into is the real problem. The problem is not racial discrimination as such. Zoning boards give bigots and other NIMBY interests the power to “segregate” neighborhoods and towns by force. Without such legal powers, builders would be able to build housing based on demand, wherever that demand my surface. The builders would be free to respond to the rational value choices of housing consumers. The racial makeup of towns might still occasionally not meet some bureaucrat's idea of “diversity.” But, given that the distribution of housing would be based on the free market, whatever housing patterns developed would be just and moral because it would be based on the voluntary choices and value judgements of free individuals contracting voluntarily with each other, without any coercive interference from government-empowered social engineers, local, state, or federal.

If HUD were really interested in justice, it would fight to establish race-neutral, individual rights-based housing free markets, not racist, rights-violating forced integration schemes. Let the people, not government bureaucrats, decide.

Related Reading:

Are "Diversity Maps" a Precursor to Forced Neighborhood Integration?

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

Starbucks/USA Today’s Racist “Race Together” Campaign

Solberg Eminent Domain Ruling and Zoning

In the letter by Readington Township, N.J. Committee candidates Liz Duffy and Ben Smith, Readington has options following Solberg ruling, which I discussed in my last post, Duffy and Smith wrote:

One thing to keep in mind is that In addition to the decision on the eminent domain suit, the township is now also faced with defending against the lawsuit filed by the Solbergs to have the entire 700-plus acres zoned for airport use. That suit had been stayed pending the outcome of the eminent domain action, and will now be re-activated if no appeal is filed.

In my last post, I argued against Duffy and Smith’s collectivist claim that they “are in the best position to represent the interests of the entire Township.” Zoning powers are an outgrowth of collectivist thinking. As such, zoning is integral to the matter of Readington’s attempted eminent domain seizure of Solberg land. The township forbids Solberg from expanding or developing by zoning those uses into illegality. The eminent domain action grew from Solberg’s lawsuit challenging the zoning ordinance blocking the Solberg’s plans.

So zoning is at the root of the eminent domain controversy. But zoning powers themselves are illegitimate because they are contrary to the proper purpose of government, which is to protect individual rights, including property rights. Zoning violates rights, so the state has no legitimate authority to dictate private property use, so long as the use of one’s property doesn’t violate the rights of others.

But since we have zoning, any landowner has a right to seek zoning changes in pursuit of the peaceable use of his own land. There’s nothing sacred about zoning powers or zoning maps. The Solbergs have the same rights as anyone else, and deserve not to be threatened with eminent domain—which is nothing more that legalized Mafia-like aggression—for seeking zoning changes needed to use their land as they judge best. Property rights should be the standard for decision making.

Property rights—the right to use one’s property as one pleases—doesn’t mean a landowner can do whatever he wants regardless of the effect on others. If resident “A” believes his rights—his use and enjoyment of his property, or his physical safety and security—will be infringed by resident “B’s” use of his property, then “A” can fight to stop “B’s” use. But the burden of proof is on “A”. If the municipal officials really had the interests of township residents at heart—rather than some undefinable “interests of the entire Township”—, they would seriously consider the rezoning, based on respect for the property rights of the Solbergs, and the valid concerns of residents as these concerns relate to their property rights, which means being safe and secure in the use of their property. If surrounding residents can demonstrate, in an objective forum, that airport expansion would violate their rights—i.e., initiate physical force against them—they would have a valid argument for stopping airport expansion.

The Solberg’s lawsuit to overturn their township’s zoning of their property is no justification for eminent domain aggression, because there is no justification for eminent domain.

Related Reading:

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

Eminent Domain- Always an Abuse

How Property Rights Solve Problems—David R. Henderson for the Library of Economics and Liberty