Property Rights

Someone in upstate New York took an electric saw to them. In California, they've been knocked down and vandalized. In Idaho, a man rammed a truck into two of them. This summer, a 19-year-old worked his way down Florida's First Coast with cans of silver and gold spray paint, hitting cameras along the way; he told police he doesn't trust license-plat ...

A new A&E series, Squatters, is bringing a frustrating reality into living rooms across America: homeowners who find themselves locked out of their own property while managing a confusing and often slow legal process to regain possession from trespassers. The show's popularity says something interesting about our culture. Americans don't spe ...

This weekend, the most substantive housing bill in decades took effect without President Donald Trump's signature. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act has been described as the most ambitious federal housing legislation in a generation. Everyone understands that housing is too expensive in many places today because we don't build enough of it. ...

In May 2019, a man robbed a credit union in Virginia, made off with $195,000, and vanished. Witnesses noticed only one odd detail: as he approached the bank, he appeared to be talking on his cell phone. Weeks later, with the trail cold, police tried something unimaginable a generation ago. They asked a magistrate for a "geofence warrant"—an order ...

Earlier this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new bill with the stated goal to "help expand homeownership, reduce costs, and support more affordable housing." Among other things, California Assembly Bill 179 identifies local development impact fees as barriers to housing opportunity—adding tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of new housing u ...

Hundreds of activists filled the theater in East Harlem's El Museo del Barrio on June 25, while dozens more rallied outside. Despite the high temperatures and aggressive humidity, the crowds were filled with enthusiasm as they waved their scarlet signs and chanted "up up with tenant power, down down with real estate!" After nearly two months of ...

In 2019, Isabella County, Mich., seized Timothy Pung's family home over a disputed tax debt of roughly $2,000. The county sold the house — worth nearly $200,000 — for just $76,000. Months later, the buyer resold it for $195,000. The result was that the Pung family walked away with less than half the market value of their home, due to a small ta ...

When George Sheetz asked for permission to place a modest manufactured home on his rural property in El Dorado County, California, the County demanded that he pay $23,420 for county-wide traffic improvements before it would say yes. The fee was not calculated by asking what traffic impacts George's home would actually cause. It came from a countywi ...

Near the end of this year's term, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Pung v. Isabella County, rejecting the argument that the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause requires government to pay fair market value to homeowners when it seizes and sells their homes to collect a tax debt. That was the question presented in the case, and the Court ...