Zoning

Defending Property Rights from Zoning Codes

As an Orem city councilor, I have a duty to defend your God-given (or natural) rights to property, which include land. If you own a patch of ground, then you should be free to do whatever you please on it to the extent that you don’t overstep the innate limits of your rights to infringe upon the equal rights of other people.

One person’s land-use violates another person’s rights when it routinely commandeers your parking space, or when it generates excessive light or disturbing noises or noxious odors or other unreasonable nuisances—and we’re justified both in clearly codifying such boundaries and in prosecuting people who seem unwilling/unable to respect those limits.

But we’re unjustified in attempting to either manipulate or control anyone beyond defense; for example, it’s fine to prosecute a man for allowing his dogs’ noise to routinely disturb his neighbors’ sleep, but not to prohibit him from owning more than two dogs, because it’s not his dogs’ excessive number but their excessive noise that violates others’ rights.

And this is partly why I hate zoning, which has become so ubiquitous that most people never question it—but they should! Zoning limits buildings’ form-and-function, which subjects people’s property to politicians’ whims, replacing free markets with central plans. This is socialistic and, like other socialistic ideas, it’s innately counterproductive.

Zoning is most-often excused because it forcibly prohibits businesspeople from building (for example) a slaughterhouse in the midst of a residential neighborhood—which is an obvious risk of living in freedom, but also a low risk, even within a genuinely-free market. And the price of legislating to thwart such rare exceptions is exceptionally-high.

Zoning can similarly preserve neighborhoods indefinitely from changing, but changes are a healthy natural part of life. Without such changes, Orem would have remained a rural area of farms (including orchards) in which hardly any of us would live. And I like residing in Orem, even if it required a developer to transform a peach orchard into a cul-de-sac.

Zoning’s supporters also claim that zoning replaces chaos with order to improve the economy’s efficiency, residents’ health, buildings’ aesthetics, et cetera—but every one of these alleged benefits is actually provided better through genuinely-free markets, which facilitate innovation that increases efficiency, effectiveness, and proper customization.

Zoning’s opponents correctly note that zoning curtails development, reduces competition, reduces housing supplies while raising housing costs, mandates false “order” and/or aesthetics over genuine needs, excludes “undesirables,” wastes people’s valuable time with needless paperwork, retards economic progress, and lowers standards-of-living.

Zoning is partly why heavily-zoned Los Angeles endures insane housing costs, while zone-free Houston enjoys some of America’s most affordable housing. Houston’s many benefits accompany a few costs like occasional land-use quirks, but they’re arguably worth-it. I want Orem to thrive like Houston by rejecting zoning for free markets.

Abolishing zoning is especially needed now while these United States are enduring a housing “crisis” of skyrocketing housing costs that are driving homebuyers toward high-density housing. Housing costs will fall again as unzoned markets allow cheaper better housing options, which will render single-family homes more affordable for everyone.