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xssve -> RE: Petition: Require States to Reform Zoning Codes to Allow Tiny Home Structures under 1000 square feet (4/9/2012 9:42:40 AM)
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Well they accomplish pretty much the same thing, they restrict what you can do with your private property, and whether it emerges as a zoning restriction (single vs. multifamily), or a covenant (subletting, with or w/out separate entrance), the outcome is the same: you can't do it without a legal battle, and in some cases, it depends on how much political power the covenanting homeowners wield: if it's a lot, they can get zoning ordinances passed, if less, covenants, which may then be challenged through ordinance changes.
One good example is covenant restriction on outdoor laundry lines: as energy prices went up in the early naughts, a lot of people began erecting or using existing outdoor clotheslines, and HOA's went nuts, passing covenants to prevent this once ubiquitous sight of sheets and dainties flapping gently in the summer breeze from driving their property values down by making the place look a little too genteel.
Homeowners who wanted to conserve energy made and equal and opposite squack, and in many places, ordinances either permitting or prohibiting this practice went into effect, depending on who had the most pull with the city council.
In every case, the motive to maximize property values is in conflict with a need to innovate for practical reasons, and it's a microcosm of the economy as a whole, where profit margins are often in conflict with issues as fundamental as employment levels high enough to sustain a consumption based market economy.
It's really a conflict between profits and practicality, and the table is invariably slightly tilted towards the profit side (money talks, and when money talks, people listen) - an economic ecosystem however, is comprised of people as well as a investments, and a healthy economic foundation is based on a healthy labor market.
It's just one of those things that requires more or less constant attention: financialism tends to crowd people out over time, for a number of reasons, in a purely financial system, people are just variable costs, and financial systems tend to migrate away form production in the brick and mortar economy, where people live and work, and towards more abstract, speculative markets, where a degradation of the brick and mortar economy can actually translate into higher margins, stock prices, etc.
"Creative destruction" they call it, but as a theoretically sustainable thing if the creation and profit is all in more and more abstract financial schemes and the social fabric bears the costs destruction of jobs, affordable housing, and basic services, then the result is invariably a Dickensian class dystopia, large scale ghettoization and accordant externalities: increases in crime rates, decline in nutrition and educational attainment, etc., that create long term problems that eventually can only be solved through taxation and restoring a more balanced economic foundation.
i.e., when I say "long term", it's usually not years, it's decades, generations, i.e., the African American community for example, for example, which has endured over 200 years of deliberate economic and social discrimination and destabilization, which created most of the problems cited by some as just reason to continue that destabilization policy, and oppose efforts to end it, i.e., Affirmative Action etc., which has managed to undo the damage (if not completely) in one or Two generations that took Six or Eight generations to institutionalize, just by taking the foot off their necks, and creating a little room for opportunity.
It's all about self interest, and in the long term, a stable, educated, flexible and reasonably mobile workforce is foundational to a healthy economy but market forces, particularly unregulated market forces, tend to work at complete odds with that goal, and housing is definitely a critical factor in that: as a purely practical matter, one needs a place to take a shower, change clothes, and eat simply to remain marginally employable at anything.
Throw in kids, and stable, affordable housing becomes a critical issue.
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