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Comment by starclerk | Hacker News Reader

Housing seems to me to be one of the most government-planned markets due to the strict zoning laws, but I've only seen fairly lefty orgs advocating for relaxed regulation. I'm surprised there isn't more movement from libertarians along the lines that property owners should have more rights for what they can build on their land.

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There are two liberties in tension: the right to do what you want on your own land, and the right to live in peace on your own land (which requires you to restrict what your neighbors can do on their land).

It's odd to me that anyone finds this compelling. You have a right to wear whatever t-shirts you like. You don't have a right to prevent other people from wearing t-shirts with colors you find objectionable. Yet, somehow in housing we've decided that, no, you actually do have the right to object to all kind of innocuous nonsense (window styles, setbacks, paint colors, and on and on). There's nothing so trivial that it's beyond objection.

I understand that people would like to control what others do around them, but we should be totally unresponsive to those desires. The sentiment behind modern NIMBYism isn't remotely confusing. Presumably, people who buy a house in a neighborhood do so because they like the neighborhood the way it is and don't want it to change. But...so what? That desire is outweighed by other concerns at every turn.

There are a lot of things that matter more than window styles and paint colors, and they can have a severe negative impact on quality of life and property values and safety.

Re: property values: who cares? Again, I don’t find this even remotely compelling when weighed against the rights of property owners to do what they want with their own property. Again, I understand why rational actors want to protect the value of their property. But we shouldn’t assist them as a matter of policy.

(And this is really neither here nor there, given my stance, but property owners actually tend to be very bad at knowing what’s going to negatively affect the value of their properties over the long term. Allowing more density would increase values, in most cases, yet homeowners universally oppose it.)

Re: safety: sure, there are some reasonable safety rules. Those aren’t what we’re talking about here.

I will never buy a property that's subject to an HOA board of approval for things. Mostly for the reasons you list above.

However, people who did buy in an area subject to an HOA presumably did want that and agreed to it ahead of time. I don't think that should allow someone to come in, buy into the development, and unilaterally decide "because my liberty" that they don't have to follow any of the HOA rules.

HOAs are the vanguard of unreasonableness. What I’m more concerned about has nothing to do with HOAs. It’s zoning, design review, and scores of other unreasonable laws that impact even those of us who aren’t crazy enough to join an HOA.

Sorry, I was trying to say that even though I would personally never buy into an HOA, I support the legal rights of those who did to enforce the bylaws/covenants of the HOA agreement.

I think HOAs are stupid, much the same way I think that many other things are stupid, but I also support the right of people to choose to voluntarily do things I find stupid (like worshipping an obviously incorrect deity [because it's different from mine]).

Building codes and zoning are constitutional, but it's now the case that nobody is allowed to build up to the limits of zoning, and the approval process has been hijacked to impose all sorts of expensive economic programs.

Mao's Great Leap Forward was similar -- essentially an "Affordable Rice" program which drove producers out of the market.

> Housing seems to me to be one of the most government-planned markets due to the strict zoning laws, but I've only seen fairly lefty orgs advocating for relaxed regulation. I'm surprised there isn't more movement from libertarians along the lines that property owners should have more rights for what they can build on their land.

Not sure about what anyone here considers as libertarian, but if you were to ask a libertarian what they would tell you is that if you own property you are free to do as you please so long as you do not harm someone else.

Also not sure what you mean by lefty orgs, because labor unions, public unions and environmental groups are the biggest lobbyist influence on the high price of housing. When it comes to affordability, housing is generally (ahem - not "always") less affordable in blue states and least affordable in the bluest regions of the blue states.

> Not sure about what anyone here considers as libertarian, but if you were to ask a libertarian what they would tell you is that if you own property you are free to do as you please so long as you do not harm someone else.

I think that's why I'm surprised I don't hear that more. The size of someone's back yard or height of their fence (to a reasonable extent) seems like it wouldn't harm someone else, but they're strongly regulated in much of CA's single-family zoning.

> Also not sure what you mean by lefty orgs, because labor unions, public unions and environmental groups are the biggest lobbyist influence on the high price of housing.

Totally. There are tons of liberal orgs that are contributing to the housing shortage. I mean the few orgs I see advocating for development (eg SF YIMBY, or politicians like Scott Wiener) appear more liberal than libertarian.

> I think that's why I'm surprised I don't hear that more. The size of someone's back yard or height of their fence (to a reasonable extent) seems like it wouldn't harm someone else, but they're strongly regulated in much of CA's single-family zoning.

I'm not sure what you mean, but to clarify: the libertarian position is that if the fence harms no one, then there is no one, not even governments, to have anything to do with said fence besides the fence's owner, as that is the owner's right.

Libertarians are 100% behind relaxing or abolishing zoning.

There are just very few of us, and we don't matter.

I think there are few true libertarians, and a whole lot more people who call themselves libertarians but instead subscribe to the 'rules for thee but not for me' mindset shared among many neoconservatives.

Some libertarians are presumably also in support of "you spent money buying land and a house in an area with full awareness of a specific framework of zoning laws and those laws should not be changed without good cause and due process". (Libertarians are not necessarily and are often not anarchists.)

In this case it's hardly zoning laws, but rather a framework that allows local politicians to impose further restrictions beyond them.

I think the libertarians are worried that their next door neighbor will drag in a trailer. Ideals are one thing, property values are another.

Around here we have a lot of open space advocates that don't want any development (even though we are losing population and in a generation won't be able to fund our schools). I've often wanted to ask one of those folks (normally older with a nice older home) if they are so invested in open space why don't they knock down their house?

>why don't they knock down their house?

You kid, but redevelopment of less productive buildings is a pretty important part of preserving open space.

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