Articles

Home-sharing is an economic boon. So why are cities trying to stamp it out?

January 10, 2019 | By CALEB TROTTER

Last year, Iowa property owners earned a cool $9.3 million renting out their properties through the popular home-sharing service Airbnb. That’s $9.3 million that helps the owners to pay mortgages on those properties, as well as other expenses like school tuition, groceries, and emergency savings. In addition, the 100,000 or so bookings raised ...

Articles

Weekly litigation update — August 4, 2018

August 04, 2018 | By JAMES BURLING

Seattle asks courts to clear the way for unlawful taxes Late last year, a King County, Washington, trial court ruled in Kunath v. City of Seattle (formerly Shock v. City of Seattle), that Seattle’s attempt to levy an income tax on so called “high-earners” was plainly unlawful. In what the local press has called a … ...

Articles

President's weekly report — January 16, 2015

January 16, 2015 | By ROB RIVETT

The Raisins are Dancing Again — cert grant The Supreme Court granted cert in Horne v. United States, making this the second trip to the Court for the dancing raisins.  Under a depression-era statute, raisin growers must give a substantial portion of their raisins to the federal government or else.  The or else here was … ...

Articles

Zoning people out of cities

August 11, 2014 | By JONATHAN WOOD

A recent New York Times article reports that Americans are moving in droves from expensive, highly centralized cities to cities with more affordable housing. In the last ten years, the number of people who moved more than 500 miles cited the cost of housing as their main motivation. Large cities on the eastern seaboard and … ...

Articles

Los Angeles responds to our General Plan 2035 letter

May 07, 2014 | By JONATHAN WILLIAMS

The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission is currently in the process of adopting General Plan 2035. Like Obamacare, General Plan 2035 checks in at a whopping 900 pages. It seeks to reshape the county through mandates including: expanded transit districts, expanded mixed use development, mandatory farming districts, and “Employment ...

Articles

Why buy the land when you can get it for free?

April 22, 2014 | By MARK MILLER

Why local governments fail to understand the Fifth Amendment takings clause, I will never know. It’s only been the law for 220 years or so, after all. It is rare that I can open the paper – or read a news site – and not discover a new example of an old problem: the government … ...

Articles

The bay area needs fewer development restrictions, not more

October 14, 2013 | By JONATHAN WOOD

As regular readers know, PLF is challenging a recently adopted plan that will restrict most future development in the bay area to 5% of the regions land area. Our lawsuit, filed on behalf of Bay Area Citizens—a non-profit organized by local residents—challenges the process by which the plan was adopted. Regional bureaucrats sold the pla ...

Articles

Prairie skyline towers over Washington D.C.

September 26, 2013 | By JONATHAN WILLIAMS

A North Dakota businessman recently announced plans to develop a 352-foot tower in Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo is a small city with a population of 105,000. The metropolitan population of Fargo is only 3% that of Washington, D.C. However, even without this latest development, Fargo has more 200 ft. commercial buildings than our nation’s capita ...

Articles

Yes, the Due Process Clause covers property owners

April 03, 2013 | By BRIAN HODGES

We recently filed another brief asking a court to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause protects property owners.  I say another brief because the question of what constitutes protected “property” for due process claims continues to come up in various cases that PLF attorneys are litigating.  The latest case on ...