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Food Trucks and Property Rights
The Institute for Justice (IJ) has filed a lawsuit against the city of Jacksonville, North Carolina. The city recently passed an ordinance that prohibits food trucks from any property that is within 250 feet of a restaurant or a residence. That means that 96 percent of the city is off-limits to food trucks. The law…
Signs and Printing Presses
ByjbpThis was originally posted on Live Oaks on July 12, 2009. Comments have not been migrated. In keeping with its unstated policy of supporting any idea or policy that increases government control, on Saturday the Chronicle editorial supported the city’s new restrictions on signs: Houston brings out the nagging mother in us: She’d be such…
The More Things Change…
ByjbpIn 1993, during the final months of the last attempt to bring zoning to Houston, I gave a talk to the Houston Property Rights Association titled “Winning the Battle but Losing the War.” In the talk, I warned that without a moral defense of property rights, we might defeat the upcoming referendum, but zoning advocates…
The “Right to Return”
Austin has become the latest city to implement a “right to return” policy. Though such policies vary, they give households an opportunity to return to a neighborhood after being displaced by gentrification. Austin will sell twenty-eight homes owned by the city to low-income households. Each property will be operated as a community land trust (CLT)….
The Fundamental Nature of Zoning
A graphic at the beginning of a recent article about short-term rentals (STRs) in the Dallas area illustrates the fundamental nature of zoning. In the graphic, it is stated that the zoning ordinance adopted by Grapevine in 1982 did not permit STRs. It is implied that if a particular use is not explicitly permitted, then…
Economic Freedom and Property Rights
Each year, the Fraser Institute releases an Economic Freedom in North America report. In its most recent report, Florida is the most economically free state and Texas is in third place. New York is the least free, and its west coast intellectual cousin–California–occupies the forty-seventh position. Conservative organizations point out that economic freedom leads to…