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« Back to Opinion & Analysis
Fight for Your Property Rights
Editorial for the Houston Community Newspaper, Inc.
Steven F. Hotze, M.D.
February 28, 2008
The zoning advocates are back. Instead of calling it zoning they call it “Blue Print Houston” or “public planning.” Whatever it is called, these individuals are promoting the creation of a new city government regulatory agency to intervene in the real estate market. They are urging civil government control over the way citizens use their property. Their ultimate goal is to cause high density development, forcing citizens to live close into the city, broad use of public transportation and the minimization of cars.
Houstonians rejected zoning in 1948, 1962 and in 1993 for good reasons.
Zoning is detrimental to the Houston economy which has thrived without it. Other major cities have adopted zoning decades ago and none of them compare to Houston’s dynamic growth over the last 50 years. Free enterprise and property rights have combined to allow Houston to grow without the restraint of socialists who think that a civil government committee knows better than the market place on how to plan our city.
Zoning proponents are socialists because they want the civil government to control the use of your property. That is what socialism means. Socialism destroys individual rights for the collective good which is determined by some elite group of individuals in power who think they know what is best for the rest of us.
With zoning, a group of government bureaucrats and politicians will determine how your property will be zoned, whether commercial, residential, multi-family, multi-use or other. This invariably destroys your property rights and your economic freedom to choose how you want to use your property. It transfers power from the individual property owner to the politicians and their bureaucrats.
Under zoning, if you are on the wrong side politically, then you may find that you will not be able to obtain the zoning that you want for the sale of your property or for the project you want to develop. The difference in the value between commercial and residential property can be significant.
A new government zoning regulatory board will create a cottage industry for lawyers and lobbyists who will charge you hefty fees to represent you before the board. Donors to the politicians in power will invariably receive better treatment before the zoning board than those who have opposed those in power. This leads to corruption.
Our founding fathers placed a premium on individual property rights which was founded upon the English common law and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Houston has the lowest housing cost of any major city. This resulted from Houston’s dynamic free enterprise environment which has encouraged entrepreneurs to meet the needs of the citizens. Houston has allowed individuals to make their own choices with the competitive market determining what the best use of property is.
Zoning would create a barrier to the free and voluntary exchange of property and development which would destroy economic freedom without which there can be no political freedom.
Houstonians need to defend their property rights.
About Conservative Republicans of Texas
Steven F. Hotze, M.D. is president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and founder of Hotze Health & Wellness Center in Houston, Texas.
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