This has no applicability to Minneapolis at all! The "housing shortage" in San Francisco is caused by too many people wanting to live there and the fact that it is located at the tip of a narrow peninsula with nowhere to add more housing. It is already one of the most densely concentrated cities in the U.S.
Property rights are not and cannot be held sacrosanct! People do not live isolated from the others. It is grotesque to assert that the owner of a particular piece of land can do with it whatever he/she pleases - which is a concept that Mr. Sowell has argued previously. Jim Bernstein Fulton -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Victoria Heller Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 3:18 PM To: Minneapolis Forum Subject: [Mpls] affordable housing & density seminar Those who are interested in this subject (affordable housing) might want to read an article published today by Thomas Sowell. He wrote it about San Francisco, but its content applies to Minneapolis too. Excerpts: "One of the main reasons for the outrageous housing prices in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay area is precisely the over-riding of property rights. Endless restrictions, obstructions, and bureaucratic delays facing anyone who is building anything on their own property in this area have forced housing costs to astronomical levels. Justice Janice Rogers Brown noted pointedly during her nomination hearings that she cannot afford to live in San Francisco, but has to commute from far away for court hearings held there. That is part of the cost of politicians ignoring property rights and courts letting them get away with it. The costs are even higher when rent control laws over-ride property rights and create housing shortages in the process. Homelessness is particularly acute in cities with severe rent control laws, such as San Francisco and New York. People sleeping on the sidewalks in Manhattan during the winter can die of exposure, despite far more boarded-up apartment buildings than would be required to house them all. Yet those buildings are boarded up because rent control laws make them uneconomical to operate. The main victims of the politicians and courts over-riding property rights are people who own no property. The main proponents of these violations of property rights are often people who do. None of this is peculiar to San Francisco or New York. Wealthy property owners in Loudoun County, Virginia, have passed laws restricting the building of housing on less than a one-acre lot in some places, and five or ten acre lots elsewhere. These laws destroyed plans to build tens of thousands of housing units in that county. Violations of property rights allow the affluent to keep out ordinary people. It was front-page news recently that an 18-story condominium building is to be constructed in South San Francisco. It took two decades for the builders to fight their way through all the politicians, courts, bureaucracies and environmental activists. All of this costs money and all that money is going to come out of the hides of the people who move into that building." Vicky Heller, North Oaks Link to article: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/printts20031110.shtml REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
