If there was a kit to build a free country, the three biggest pieces in the box would be the fundamental rights to life, liberty and property.<\/p>\n
After the U.S. Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment and the concurrent Civil Rights Act of 1866 sought to secure these rights for the freed slaves by guaranteeing them to every person. Property rights were explained as the right \u201cto inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
These rights belong to individuals, not to communities, and not to activists seeking to remake society into the socialist hellhole they know it can be if they can just control three votes on the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n
On June 25, the Board of Supervisors is set to consider a motion by Supervisor Hilda Solis to advance a \u201cCommunity Opportunity to Purchase Act Program for Unincorporated Los Angeles County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solis is proposing a \u201cpolicy intervention\u201d to prevent \u201cpotential displacement risks\u201d from rising real estate values. The problem, as she sees it, is that the owners of apartment buildings can sell them to anyone they choose.<\/p>\n
Her solution is TOPA and COPA, acronyms that stand for \u201cTenant Opportunity to Purchase\u201d and \u201cCommunity Opportunity to Purchase.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because tenants typically don\u2019t have enough money to buy the apartment building in which they live, a \u201cCommunity Opportunity to Purchase\u201d program would use other people\u2019s money to buy the building.<\/p>\n
The \u201cCOPA Program operates alongside the TOPA Program by granting similar purchase rights to mission\u2011driven affordable housing organizations \u2014 such as community land trusts and nonprofit developers \u2014 who can acquire and preserve properties when tenants lack the resources to purchase directly,\u201d the Solis motion states.<\/p>\n
Whenever you hear about a \u201chousing bond,\u201d that\u2019s the government borrowing money to give out grants and contracts to the type of entities that Solis is trying to empower with \u201cpurchase rights.\u201d Local bonds are repaid, with interest, by placing charges on property tax bills for 20 to 40 years. State general obligation bonds are repaid from the state treasury, displacing other budget priorities that might have been funded if there wasn\u2019t so much debt (plus interest) to repay first.<\/p>\n
But even a flood of your tax dollars isn\u2019t enough to make TOPA\/COPA into a viable plan. That\u2019s because property owners are free \u2013 there\u2019s that word again \u2013 to sell their properties without first waiting for the \u201ccommunity\u201d to go through a decision-making process to approve the purchase and funding.<\/p>\n
A 2023 report by the county\u2019s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, cited by Solis, says \u201cthe housing stock\u201d in the unincorporated county area totals 293,000 housing \u201cunits,\u201d of which 110,000 are renter-occupied. Single-family homes account for the majority, 59,800 tenant households. The next largest category, housing 31,500 tenant households, is \u201cproperties with more than five units.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tenant-occupied properties have owners (even when the owners are corporations owned by individuals) who have the right under the law to \u201clease, sell, hold, and convey\u201d their property.<\/p>\n
Solis wants to impede those rights. Her motion before the Board of Supervisors would direct various county departments to write an ordinance within 180 days to require \u201cregistration\u201d of properties with five or more units, and mobile home parks, in order to \u201cmonitor sale transactions\u201d and notify \u201cqualified mission-driven purchasers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ordinance would \u201cdevelop procedures for implementation and enforcement\u201d and \u201cinclude budgetary and staffing considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The county CEO is directed to report back on potential \u201cfunding sources,\u201d which generally means borrowed money or tax increases.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the COPA program is to prevent the sale of apartment buildings until \u201ccommunity\u201d buyers have a chance to work out their own offer, which could take many months. This process could easily hold properties hostage, with ransom payments offering the only escape.<\/p>\n
Not only does this barrier to sales infringe fundamental property rights, it sends a message to housing investors to stay out of Los Angeles County and build beautiful new apartments someplace else, where they\u2019re free to buy and sell property, while Los Angeles stagnates.<\/p>\n
This is how government force drives down the quality of life, and how freedom enables prosperity.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see which one has three votes on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there was a kit to build a free country, the three biggest pieces in the box would…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":890221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337,1269,16837,9656],"class_list":["post-890220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116807023211141928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}