Statists take & don’t compensate

Statists love the government – they worship the state – but they hate the Constitution, individual freedom, especially the Bill of Rights. The hallmark of every statist is the attitude that they possess authority to deprive individuals of their rights to due process of law and to take private property for public use without just compensation.

The Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights constitutionally prohibits the schemes of the statists. It specifically provides that: “No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Today, however, the statists controlling local governments everywhere are telling individuals that they don’t enjoy the right to rent their own property. They’re imposing restrictions on how and to whom individuals can lease their own real estate and refusing to compensate property owners for such unjust impositions.

Individuals are told by the statists that they can’t rent, and if they can’t rent they can’t sell either, because prospective buyers won’t buy what they can’t rent.  This leaves property owners deprived of their property rights without due process of law and without reasonable compensation.

The statist lawmakers in Ojai California, for example, have voted recently to make all rentals for less than 30 days illegal. Similar unjust restrictions have been imposed all over America from New York to San Francisco and several Minnesota cities in-between.

Winona, Minnesota resident Ethan Dean owned a three-bedroom home near Winona State University. While he was on his fourth mission in Afghanistan between 2011 and 2012, he arranged to rent his home to students of the university. “I started getting nasty notes from the government while I was in Iraq,” he explained. “The notes were from the city treasurer telling me that it was illegal to rent out my home. I had no idea what they were talking about.”

The statists told him that they had imposed a restriction on the number of homeowners who can rent out properties in specific neighborhoods. They called it the “30 Percent Rule” -- allowing only 30 percent of homes in a neighborhood to be rentals. Dean’s block was 78 percent rental properties when the ban was enacted, but his neighbor’s permits were apparently grandfathered in. “They told me I had to kick the kids out of my house, and if I didn’t, I’d be fined $450 a day,”

The restrictions prevented Dean from even selling his home, as any time a potential homebuyer expressed interest, they quickly backed out after learning the house was not rental-certified. “I couldn’t rent it, and I couldn’t come back and live in it. I was in Afghanistan serving our country.” He couldn’t keep up on his mortgage payments. So he lost his home to foreclosure.

Statists take and don’t compensate.