Thanks again Clarence, George Will in his piece in the Washington Post today, mentions the Supreme Court case Cedar Point Nursery:
"The city says this thicket of restrictions on apartment owners' property rights constitutes mere "regulation" of, not a physical "taking" of, property. The Supreme Court, echoing two luminaries of jurisprudence, has already said otherwise.
William Blackstone (1723-1780), the British jurist whose thinking informed that of America's Founders, said "the right of property" is "the right to exclude." It is the "dominion" that an individual exercises "in total exclusion of the right of any other individual." Thomas Merrill, a professor at Columbia Law School, says, "Exclusion lies at the root of property because the institution of property is dependent on possession, and exclusion lies at the root of possession."
In an amicus brief challenging the RSL, the Manhattan Institute and Cato Institute note that New York City's micromanaging of rental property degrades owners' rights "to a far greater degree" than did a 1975 California "emergency" law that the court struck down in 2021. This law compelled owners of agricultural properties to permit labor unions, four times a year, 30-day periods of access, for up to three hours a day, for the purpose of soliciting the support of employees. The court affirmed the owner's property right to exclude.
With policies like those under RSL, politicians can effect indirect wealth transfers without directly voting for them. As Justice Antonin Scalia said of many such transfers, they are "achieved 'off budget,' with relative invisibility and thus relative immunity from normal democratic processes." Such "off budget" financing of public policy is disguised taxation. And it is the taking of private property, which constitutionally requires "just compensation."
An Institute for Justice amicus brief in the New York City case notes an unsurprising fact: "Rent-control laws have been shown to reduce a city's housing supply by double-digit percentages." Artificially suppressing monetary demands for something, and thereby decreasing the incentive to provide that something, is a recipe for getting less of it.
The economic illiteracy of politicians who defend New York City's RSL regime is an affliction that city voters should correct. Stopping the regime's gross violation of property rights - affirming the Constitution's taking clause - is the Supreme Court's duty."
