Ah yes, my inalienable right to zone property as I see fit because I want to redevelop it. So often forgotten.

/s

Yea most local governments are slow and obtuse with zoning, but it's not as if the concept of zoning is a violation of your rights, or even that bad of a thing. Criticism is fine, but using hyperbolic statements about how the government is stealing our rights is just asinine.

I understand it feels more salient now, but the government basically always could.

They will take it over late tax payments amounting to a tiny fraction of the value.

They will take it to sell it to developers, who may not ever build anything there.

Cops will hound you until you leave if you meet some pre-crime criteria.

Or take it outright, if you rent to someone who cultivates illegal vegetation.

Or destroy it, chasing someone who might not even be in it, and you will not be reimbursed for this sort of 'taking'.

I get that the eviction thing seems new, and the goal is actually somewhat novel. But 'property rights' have never been as strong as a lot of people think.

(All of those things have happened fairly recently. I'm not going to spend the time finding a pile of links nearly everyone is just going to skip over.)

The common theme is that they're both massive affronts to property rights.

Ok, well it is also the right of the state to make laws and force these communities to change, under threat of government force.

Which is what is happening right now. There are going to be lawsuits that force communities to allow people to do what they want, with their own property.

Go win a state election if you disagree.

I really want to know how they got written in the first place. It seems clear that somehow, zoning regulations is one of the biggest issues we've got. But everyone has these onerous zoning regulations that make life worse... where did they come from?!

No more so than actual real estate being seized by governments under Eminent Domain laws.

But maybe not how it should be? You own your plot of land... I don't see how it's reasonable for you to claim any control over how other owners use their plot(s) of land, within reason. If a building proposal fits within the current zoning, the default should be approval. I don't think it's reasonable for neighbors to be able to kill a project over shadows on their vegetables.

That's not really true. The state can't pass a law saying your house was actually never yours and you are now trespassing get out.

Zoning is a rulebook the state invented, it has to be held accountable to some degree for it. I wouldn't call it reasonable for the state to turn the houses around you into garbage landfills and telling you 'tough luck'

We do.

That would be the case if we were talking about their own property, but they're using rules and regulations to force other people to not do what they want with their property.

In a healthy market, yeah, some people would not sell out and change would be gradual as the city built up incrementally. That's how things should be, but we do not allow that.

It is the way the law is interpreted, and we've given up a lot of rights in the name of the drug war.

Not that it makes it less terrible but backhanded stuff like this is not uncommon at all. If you run a business in my state you basically give up your right to stand up to the state/local government about anything (because they will use its power of discretionary enforcement to destroy your business).

If you're in the right you can win the head on fight (well, win it 10yr later in court, if that counts) but the government will always out flank you if they want something done but you are in their way. Sucks but it's reality.

to you.

> Everything else is the government imposing what one does with their private property

But they already do that with "decades old law" - e.g. you (probably) can't run a brothel from your private property in LA. Why is this such a different restriction?

So we're in agreement, then? zoning should stay the way it is now?

Is that even legal? It's one thing to use zoning for city planning as a general guideline, or to require permits to ensure work is done safely; but people ultimately have rights to their property.

Has it been taken to court before? It's borderline a violation of the Takings Clause:

"private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation."

The reasons aren't compelling to me. It's essentially biased toward money changing hands. Invite different people over every night and do drugs, get drunk and have sex? It's your god given right! Let guests stay for free for a year in your absence? Your property, your rules.

Money changed hands!? Oh my Gosh zoning laws, community rights, etc

If there are safety or community character concerns, and laws created to address them, the laws should be completely neutral to commercial aspects like money changing hands, which are only relevant to special interests who want to stifle commercial competition.

There’s really not. All extant democracies recognize private property, with certain limits for the public interest. Zoning is an extreme imposition on private property rights, of a sort that ordinarily would only be consciences in light of equally compelling public interests. Unfortunately, we had a few bad Supreme Court decisions at the height of white panic about desegregation that normalized such impositions. You’d hesitate greatly before taxing someone half the value of their property, but local governments think nothing of eliminating half the value (or more) of private property through zoning or historical preservation ordinances.

That's not a service. The government requires you to do so by law, because they don't want landlords doing it themselves. They didn't take away some notary service you could get done by AAA -- they took away a fundamental means of doing business.

It's like claiming that the government took away a service (police) that you were expecting to have around. The police literally exist, and are required to be used, because they've already removed the option of self-policing.

Except it's the opposite. People had public access, then he bought it, then he tried to unlawfully take away public access. If he doesn't want people on his property, he shouldn't have bought property that has a preexisting public easement.