Happy Fourth of July, and congratulations on living in the first country in the history of the world to be founded on the idea that governments are established to protect individual rights. It’s in the Declaration of Independence.
The opposite kind of government exercises power without regard to individual rights. That’s what we have in California.
Currently the Assembly is considering Senate Bill 79, which would allow the construction of high-rise apartment buildings in areas zoned for single-family homes if the parcel is within one-half mile of transit, defined all the way down to a qualifying bus stop.
If you own a home on a quiet street that falls within the transit radius, you could wake up to the sound of the home next door being knocked down to be replaced by an apartment building up to 65 feet high. The law would make this “by right” development, meaning there’s no approval process that would allow neighbors to raise issues about the impact of the project.
For eventual infrastructure upgrades or services needed to accommodate the increased population density, the local government can put a tax increase or bond measure on the ballot for voter approval. Parcel taxes and the charges to repay local bonds are added to property tax bills. Renters can vote, but only property owners pay.
SB 79 would impose this on the entire state of California. Any and all single-family homes within one-half mile of a qualifying bus stop could become apartment buildings. No local government could prevent it. Even in neighborhoods that are not within one-half mile of transit, all it would take to upzone those neighborhoods is a plan for a bus lane.
Zoning is a legal constraint that balances the rights of different property owners. One of the fundamental influences on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and later the Fourteenth Amendment was Sir William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” in which he identified the fundamental rights of individuals as life, liberty, and property. He wrote, “The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of property: which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land.”
The right to the “enjoyment” of property is fundamental to freedom. It’s obvious that an individual who buys a home on a quiet street is robbed of the enjoyment of that property by a state law that allows developers to buy up the neighbors’ homes and turn them into high-rise apartment blocks.
What’s the justification for doing this to people who have invested their life’s savings and their life’s earnings to own a single-family home away from urban density?
According to the bill, it’s the “housing shortage both acute and chronic,” “environmental sustainability,” and the need for “sustainable funding” for “public transit systems.”
The housing shortage in California is caused by state and local policies. For example, the just-passed bill “reforming” the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for housing makes construction more expensive. For apartment buildings, the new law requires developers to pay more for construction labor if they want to take advantage of a CEQA exemption. For other home construction, the California Building Industry Association observed that the new law enables “local agencies to impose new and seemingly uncapped fees on home construction projects” to fund a “VMT [vehicle miles traveled] mitigation bank” that “would be used in part to help fund affordable housing projects.”
In other words, it’s a giant new tax on housing construction.
The justification of “environmental” and “funding” sustainability rests on the belief that the government must persuade or coerce people to use public transit because they stubbornly won’t. It’s the 1970s-era delusion that the government must “get people out of their cars.” But this is a failure, not least because the government has managed to turn public transit and city sidewalks into filthy encampments and dangerous zombie drug dens.
SB 79 is grand larceny, robbing millions of Californians of their right to own and enjoy what they bought, a single-family home in a low-density neighborhood. Look up your representatives at findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov and give them a call.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley
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