Imagine for a moment, that you want to open a restaurant in an impoverished neighborhood in your city. When you apply for the necessary permits at the Health Department, you are told that you will only be allowed to open your restaurant if you agree to sell a percentage of meals below your costs. You…
For nearly a century, Americans have been told that we face an affordable housing crisis. Despite an endless number of government schemes purported to address the problem, it has only grown worse. Why? The simple answer is that supply has failed to keep pace with demand. But the simple answer doesn’t explain why developers and…
Housing advocates frequently claim that racism explains the large gap in home ownership between whites and non-whites. To overcome this racism, they call for government programs to help non-whites purchase homes. It is true that past racism did deter home ownership among non-whites, but that fact must be considered in the full context. The source…
Leftists have a tactic that is often effective in generating support for their policies. They tell a really sad story, sprinkle in some horrifying statistics, and then evade relevant facts. A story about the eviction crisis on The Appeal illustrates this tactic. The article begins with a story about Samantha, a mother who worries where…
Housing advocates are promoting two bills introduced in the Texas Legislature that would give tenants more choices and reduce choices for landlords. The bills would prohibit landlords from using source of income as a consideration when renting a property. The purpose of the bills is to force landlords to accept housing vouchers. Advocates defend the…
One of the primary complaints about gentrification is the displacement of the existing residents in a neighborhood. To reduce displacement, a growing number of cities are requiring developers to include affordable housing in exchange for permission to build a new housing project. These mandates violate the property rights of developers by interfering with their freedom…
When government officials mandated the wearing of face masks in public, they implied that we are too stupid to make rational decisions. They implied that, even if we were presented with the facts, we would refuse to make wise choices. They implied that, without public officials issuing orders, we are helpless. Sen. Ted Cruz received…
In 2011, I purchased a boarded up home in the Sunnyside community of Houston. This low-income neighborhood was filled with similar homes. Many of these homes were in disrepair and hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in decades. To call the area economically depressed would be an understatement. Yet, I took a risk and…
Irrationality can take many forms, but one of the most common is context-dropping. When one drops context, one considers an issue in isolation, disconnected from other issues and known facts. When one drops context, one looks only at the immediate moment in disregard for the long-term implications. The pandemic and government’s response to it has…
In April 2020, the town council in Montclair, New Jersey, passed a rent control ordinance. The Montclair Property Owners Association (MPOA) launched a petition drive to submit the ordinance to a referendum. The town clerk refused to certify the petitions, but on February 22, 2021 a judge ordered the town council to repeal the ordinance…
In previous posts we have seen how the “right” to choose asserted by housing advocates leads to the destruction of freedom of choice, how the “right” to stay is an assault on voluntary action, and how the “right” to equal treatment is a demand for injustice. In this post, we will examine the fourth “right”:…