Tag Archives: affordable housing

A Case for Freedom from Zoning

Leave a reply

As Provoans reconsider their current zoning ordinances, Oremites are doing likewise—and, although the following editorial about zoning (which local newspapers rejected publishing) was written for Orem, it applies to Provo also.

Utah’s sixth-largest city of Orem is currently torn between residents who want to zone for more single-family housing, on one figurative hand, and residents who want to zone for more high-density housing served by heavily-subsidized mass-transit, on the other figurative hand. But, amidst this controversy, one view that’s not being considered yet is abolishing zoning entirely. This is understandable because zoning has become so ubiquitous in these United States that few Americans ever question it anymore—but we should question it for reasons that I’m about to explain as best as I can…

I understand that we each have equal God-given rights, including over our person and property and children, and to either contract or defend. We exercise our rights to both property and contract together in free markets, which foster innovation that raises efficiency, effectiveness, customization, prosperity, abundance, and standards-of-living. And we exercise our rights to both contract and defense together to charter political systems that operate within their limited delegated authority to expertly assist us in defending our rights from others’ aggression, but NOT to reign over us like kings.

One way that politicians too-often violate those rights that they should help us to defend is by dictating our land-use through zoning ordinances, which assign our land to one of many zones and regulate each zone’s buildings’ form-and-function. In dictating development, zoning not only violates our God-given property rights, which is a crime, but it also reduces our politicians’ time spent on actual crimefighting, subverts them from rights-defenders into Soviet-style central economic planners, defies Constitutional due-process-of-law, and counteracts the natural self-optimization of free markets.

Zoning not only de-optimizes economies in general but, to be more specific, it imposes false “order” and/or aesthetics over people’s genuine needs, curbs competition, curtails needed development, reduces housing supplies, raises housing costs, wastes developers’ time on needless paperwork, impedes local entrepreneurship to escape poverty, disfavors new/small businesses, stifles innovation, slows progress, increases car traffic and its air-pollution, lowers overall standards-of-living, excludes “undesirables,” discourages social connectedness, contributes to homelessness, and much more.

Zoning, by rendering housing needlessly expensive, has incentivized Americans to forgo owning land in order to reside in apartments. KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov called such “delandization” the greatest threat to American liberty because Soviet subverters learned long ago that renters were psychologically likelier than landowners to embrace socialism. And this is why socialists have long sought to needlessly urbanize small-town America by zoning its residents into high-density housing alongside public mass-transit, which living-conditions also facilitate political surveillance-and-control.

So, zoning violates God-given rights, defies Constitutional law, de-optimizes economies, and fosters socialism—and, considering these reasons to oppose zoning, why would any non-socialist ever support zoning?

Some claim that zoning prevents unwise land-use and/or criminal nuisances—but this is superfluous because developers are naturally incentivized to act wisely not criminally. Others claim that zoning improves economic efficiency, residents’ health, buildings’ aesthetics, et cetera—but these claims are disproven, and these benefits are provided best via free markets. Yet others claim that zoning preserves existing neighborhood character—but this goal is best achieved by neighborly persuasion, cooperation, and perhaps restrictive covenants, not by abdicating land to corruptible politicians.

A more persuasive argument for zoning is that it keeps property values high—but this is another way to say that zoning keeps housing needlessly expensive. Zoning is partly why heavily-zoned Los Angeles endures insane housing costs (which is driving-out its middle class), while non-zoned Houston enjoys some of America’s most affordable housing. Such freedom allows rare quirks, like either a convenient mini-mart or a lone high-rise amidst a sea of small cottages—but such exceptions exist even in heavily-zoned cities, and these costs of free markets are arguably well worth their benefits.

So, zoning has illusory benefits but substantial detriments. Land-use is best decided neither in voting-booths nor in planning bureaus, but in free markets. De-zoning is especially needed during the 2020s as we Americans endure a “crisis” of skyrocketing housing costs that are driving homebuyers increasingly toward high-density or even homelessness. Un-zoned markets will allow homebuyers to more-easily obtain cheaper better options that will best serve their actual needs/wants, rather than what best serves politicians and perhaps their comrades or cronies. So, let’s please abolish zoning!

References:

Municipal Socialism via Zoning, “Smart Growth,” and Urbanism

Leave a reply

We should feel deeply concerned that many local Utah County politicians (including in both Provo and Orem) seek to implement so-called “smart growth” policies to redirect development from their town’s outskirts to its center in order to concentrate residents into walkable urbanesque mixed-use high-rises served by public mass-transit. It seems that these urbanization trends originated among socialists for ideological reasons, both to implement their practices and to encourage people to embrace their ideology, which we liberty-lovin’ Americans should both understand and oppose.

Enhanced urbanism was one of many techniques that the KGB used to subvert nations to embrace socialism. As KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov warned Americans in 1984 about this subject: “Very briefly on population distribution: urbanization and ‘delandization’ (the taking away of private land) is the greatest threat to American nationhood. Why? Because the poor farmer often is a greater PATRIOT than an affluent dweller of a large congested American city. Communists know this very well. The Soviets keep a very tight control over the size of their cities by the system of ‘police registration of residence’ called ‘propiska.’ They know perfectly well that the farmer will fight an invader until last bullet ON HIS LAND. ‘Underprivileged’ or urbanized masses on the other hand, may feel like meeting an invader with flowers and red banners. ALIENATION of people from privately-owned land is one of the very important methods of DEMORALIZATION.” And demoralization, by the way, is the first of the four stages of KGB subversion.

Such Soviet urbanization practices began gaining some popularity beyond the USSR during the 1970s, including in America under the label “smart growth.” “Smart growth” proponents advocated that their densification policies would increase choice, foster community, improve health, and protect nature, while opponents have criticized these policies’ tendencies to counterproductively exacerbate the same problems that they were purported to alleviate. “Smart growth” has since associated itself with the broader concept of “sustainable development,” which exploits radical environmentalism to falsely excuse socialism, including at the municipal level. And, aided by such excuses, socialists (whether overt or covert or unwitting) have striven to needlessly urbanize small-town America, and to incentivize their residents to needlessly abandon their privately-owned cars for inefficient public mass-transit. And these same collectivistic trends are now flourishing even in Utahn cities like Provo and Orem.

“Smart growth” policies rely upon central economic planning through municipal zoning ordinances, which originated among European socialists and (like “smart growth”) are innately counterproductive. Zoning overrides free markets as it curtails development, reduces competition, reduces housing supplies while raising housing costs, mandates false “order” and/or aesthetics over genuine human needs, excludes “undesirables,” wastes people’s valuable time with needless paperwork, retards economic progress, and lowers standards-of-living. Zoning is partly why Los Angeles’ skyrocketing housing prices are driving away residents while Houston’s highly-affordable housing is attracting them. Zoning originally focused on separating functions, but it has increasingly shifted to focus on regulating form also, and such form-based code is vital in helping cities to implement “smart growth” policies. Provo’s city council openly considered adding such form-based code to its zoning ordinances within this last decade.

Over this last decade or so, local municipal officers in both Provo (through its Vision 2030) and Orem (through its State Street Master Plan) have adopted some “smart growth” policies to attempt to gradually concentrate their residents into downtown areas served by public mass-transit. Provo’s officers have proven very successful at implementing their vision through central planning, while Orem’s officers are currently facing tremendous opposition about their attempts to redevelop a few intersections into urbanesque hubs. Perhaps liberty-lovin’ Provoans could learn a few things from their Oremite counterparts. And hopefully both will eventually learn to scrutinize their local candidates better and to only support those candidates who not only understand individual God-given (or natural) rights, including free markets over central planning, but who will also consistently champion those rights. Please start today to motivate, educate, inform, mobilize, and organize your liberty-lovin’ neighbors for victory.

References:

Subjugating Landlords via Occupancy Laws

Leave a reply

Provo’s city council is continuing to increase its control over Provo residents, including landlords, who sometimes dare to use their property as they please rather than as the city council pleases.

Our most basic rights include rights to both property and contract, which are the basis of free markets—and our politicians are morally obligated to both respect and defend such rights, rather than to wantonly violate those rights as a criminal would do.

Whenever a politician ceases to defend rights and instead dictates how those rights will be exercised, this is essentially tyranny, regardless of how petty it may be—and, in cases like this, it invites the question of who truly owns the property in question.

Policies like occupancy restrictions not only violate rights, but they are also impractical, as they render rental housing both scarcer and costlier than it would otherwise be. This needlessly hurts poorer Provoans by rendering housing less affordable to them.

Rather than dictate how landlords are to rent their property, it would be better for Provo politicians to both respect and defend landlords’ rights to rent their property to others as they please, as long as they don’t violate anyone else’s rights in the process of doing so.

Such changes in policy won’t occur without changes in politicians, though, which won’t occur without changes in voting habits. So, please educate and inform and activate your neighbors to vote better in our local elections.

References:

Centrally-Planning Affordable Housing

Leave a reply

Provo’s city council is currently considering allowing residents to maintaining accessory apartments within homes that they occupy, along with detached apartments and even “tiny” homes, subject to certain conditions, all in pursuit of a city goal to render local housing more affordable.

It’s great that these city councilors may decide to allow Provoans to exercise property rights within carefully-restricted limits—but why limit these property rights in the first place? Ideally, their only limits should be the equal rights of others. Why not police those natural boundaries and, otherwise, allow residents to exercise their property rights as they please?

This goal accompanies other city goals (including those found in Vision 2030/2050) such as reducing the amount of rental housing available within Provo, redistributing renters to other parts of Utah county, restricting the number of renters per unit, et cetera, all of which is helping to render local rental housing less affordable.

All of these somewhat-conflicting policies are part of a broader effort by Provo’s city council to centrally-plan our local economy as much as residents will allow. And, based upon Vision 2030/2050 plus what’s been heard in public meetings, those aspirations extend even to regulating our diet-and-exercise while deciding how we will landscape our yards. Do we want the city choosing the aesthetics of our homes?

Are they our masters or our servants? If ownership is defined as the right to determine how something is used, then are “our” homes truly our property or theirs?

What Provo’s city council could do, instead, is to simply respect that every Provoan has God-given (or natural) rights to their respective persons, property, children, et cetera, which end where the equal rights of others begin, along with rights to interact either contractually or defensively—and that their job is merely to assist Provoans in defending such basic rights against others’ aggression.

This change-of-attitude would restore a relatively free market in Provo, and free us as individuals from the increasingly-burdensome requirements of city ordinances, which have been multiplying since 2001. It would also render Provo’s city government cheaper and smaller and better-able to focus on defending our rights rather than attempting to run our lives by commanding us in all things.

But this change-of-attitude almost certainly won’t occur without a change-of-leadership. Provo’s city council has, for many years, remained firmly dominated by central planners over free marketeers. This is probably because most Provoans don’t bother to participate in local elections but instead abdicate participation to a tiny fraction of their neighbors, of which a slight majority are statists who elect fellow statists to public office.

We can change this status quo by choosing to both educate and inform ourselves about municipal issues, and then to involve ourselves regularly in local politics, while seeking and activating and mobilizing like-minded neighbors to join us. Together, we can achieve a freer city, which may serve a start to a freer state, nation, and world. Please start now by making some concrete goals and plans. And, if our website helps, then please use it.

References: