Is your home your castle?

Is your home your castle?

The July 10, 2003 Beacon editorial states, “A recent supreme court ruling has turned upside down the right of the municipalities over zoning matters making it now the obligation of the community to show why they shouldn’t approve applications from property owners for overbuilding, over extending and otherwise violating local building and (sic) code laws.” Just to clarify some of these thoughts, zoning laws describe land use. Building codes describe minimum structural requirements for construction and fire code compliance. If used effectively, they can be risk management tools that save lives. What is important is to identify whether a municipality or planning board is attempting to regulate whether your property is yours or the government’s to control through zoning. The specific case in question involved the height of a decorative wrought iron gate. The municipality claimed its “right” to limit the height to four feet that was out of proportion to the scale of the property. The owner desired an eight-foot high, ornately gated entrance to his mansion.

Using a theoretical example, a municipality’s zoning laws tell an owner that he can or cannot build a single-family home on his land, even if it is adjacent to other suburban homes. Laws establishing “historic districts,” “landmarks,” or “improvement zones” vex owners who are consequently unable to erect fences, change rain gutters, add rooms, paint their houses, remove trees or install a gate. It is estimated that these regulations are responsible for nearly thirty percent of the cost of a home and are a major cause of soaring home prices – effectively restricting who can buy a home and where.

These government regulations demand the sacrifice of the property owner’s rights to the esthetic “preferences” of random strangers. What is the reason? The planning agency has not said that the construction of a new home is a hazard to others. It has not said that construction will cause pollution to flow from one property to someone else’s property. Should esthetic opinions dominate? The government essentially wants power to control the design choice of the property owner in the name of the non-property–owning public.

This sort of power abuse is an inversion of the very purpose of government. There is no such thing as a “right to a pleasing view.” If one owns property, one has the moral right to control it – even if that conflicts with the esthetic tastes of a passerby. One has the right to acquire property, and once acquired, to use it without interference from others. An owner must not interfere with the rights of his neighbors to do likewise, but there is no moral basis for demanding that an owner alter his property to make the view more pleasing to an onlooker. Your life (and property) belongs to you and not to others.

The Declaration of Independence reminds us that it is only “to secure these rights” that “governments are instituted among men.” A legitimate government agency would not try to “protect” the view – it should do all that it could to protect the property of (home) owners from interferences of tourists and neighbors who claim to have a view that they are unwilling or unable to pay for. Planning agencies do not have the right to plan away the rights of property owners in order to satisfy the preferences of others.

The authors of the Declaration of Independence warned about incursions on our rights, writing, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” In our villages and towns, the basic notion of the right to property is under attack. The court ruled correctly for individual rights.