Quote:
Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Excuse me, everyone, but I thought zoning wasn't supposed to be for the purpose of maximizing values for private persons, but to regulate land use for everyone's health, welfare, and safety.
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To-may-to, to-mah-to. Having your local jurisdiction write a Penal Code is going to raise property values if it didn't have one before. It was for the purpose of health, welfare, and safety, and obviously wasn't specifically intended to raise property values. I was talking about the effect of zoning; I have no knowledge or opinion about the intent behind it. If I'm defending zoning before the Supreme Court instead of the PB, I'll be sure to use your argument and make the intent distinction.
Even more than I believe in God, I trust that rich corporations are rational actors even when they're not being particularly nice. Thus, when Kaufman & Broad tells me I can't have a washline in my backyard, I assume it's because some KB pencil-pusher has established that it raises KB's per-parcel sales price. If I can break the CC&Rs and sell free and clear, I've made a bonus I didn't expect. This is the situation of 99.9% of people affected by zoning.
I don't particularly worry about the landowners who have zoning imposed on them and lose theoretical uses; the vast majority of residential land purchasers are buying parcels in places zoning already exists, and only Birchers and Bilmore care about the theoretical wealth transfer that occurs with
every government regulation --- everybody else talks about whether it's a good idea or not, not whether it's a taking. Every government action is a loss of freedom, but that's not the end of the analysis. Zoning is a pretty good way of assuring your land use had minimal impact on other landowners. We should poll the Birchers to find out of they voted with their dollars and live in jurisdictions without zoning, as a matter of principle.
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