The Growing Threat of Affordable Housing

Poor people: not as spiritually uplifting to look at as wildflowers.

Friend Xerxes laments that a local hiking trail he has been accustomed to use to view wildflowers has now been fenced off to allow the construction of a new subdivision. “In our social structure,” he observes, “private property is close to sacred.”

He gets that just about backwards.

The basic premise on which our common law is founded is that nobody can really own land.

Land is God’s creation, and is therefore meant by him for the use of all mankind—just as we assume with air or water.

One does not actually own the land, but the labour one has put into it. If this is inseparable from the land itself, that establishes ownership.

This is why we have “squatter’s rights.” If land is lying unused, anyone who builds on it or tills it or seeds it establishes ownership. This supersedes any paper deed.

This means that any government is acting illegitimately if it prohibits productive use of land; if it leaves land as wilderness. So long as anyone genuinely needs that land in order to grow food, it is immoral to refuse this. So long as someone genuinely needs that land to build shelter, it is immoral to refuse this.

To justify preserving a local hiking trail, you need to argue that this use of that land is most beneficial even to the poorest of citizens. Ultimately, not just the citizens of the local area, but all mankind.

Unfortunately, we have lost sight of this. The poor are suffering everywhere as a result.