Rights are not a  Privilege

An opinion piece in the San Bernardino Sun essentially claims that zoning is an application of property rights:

When someone “owns” property, they own a “bundle” of ancillary rights. Bundle of rights is a term for a group of legal privileges granted to the owner at the time of purchase. The bundle contains ownership. Right to control; Right to exclude; Right to enjoy; And right to dispose.

Increasing housing density by doing away with single-family, he argues, “

can adversely affect most, if not all, neighboring rights…

Under existing law, private interference is interference with the use or enjoyment of property by the property owner if the interference is substantive and unreasonable. It’s easy to imagine that building a 10-unit home development in the middle of an existing single-family home neighborhood would be a “substantial and irrational” interference in its enjoyment.

It is also easy to imagine bats flying out of one’s ears, but that doesn’t make it reasonable.

I recently wrote about a mixed-use neighborhood that has commercial, single-family homes, and a 10-unit home development. This mixed use contributes to a more walkable neighborhood, while is all the rage these days.

More importantly, mixed uses do not create a “substantial and irrational interference” with the property rights of others. The right to property means the freedom to produce, use, keep, and trade material values, so long as one respects the freedom of others to do the same. A 10-unit development does nothing to hinder the exercise of these freedoms.

Rights are not a group of legal privileges granted to owners by government. If rights are merely granted privileges, then those “rights” can be removed at any time by that very same government. And that is what zoning does. Under zoning, an owner cannot use his property by right—as he deems best—but only with the permission of government officials.

The author would have us believe that using government coercion to prevent individuals from using their property as they choose is an application of property rights. The author defines property rights by non-essentials, and this doublespeak is the result.