Zoning enforcement is being used as an excuse to spy on neighbors
Zoning enforcement is being used as an excuse to spy on neighbors
Stories like this get the "conspiracy theory" label until they're splashed on headlines. Spying on people without a search warrant is one more reason to abolish zoning.
Zoning is more than the paint-by-number maps framed and hanging on the walls of local planning departments. It’s what gives other people the power to decide where and how you live. Each type of land use has its own zone, and each zone has its own rules. And each local government’s zoning rules are different from the next.
This post by Michigan land use attorneys summarizes how powerful these regulations are. You might think of it as the public sector version of the strictest HOA imaginable. Common violations people complain about are the types of things that would be fixed by other property rules. For example, storing open containers of garbage in your driveway, or parking a car in the front yard.
But zoning isn’t just about nuisances. It’s the driving force behind car dependency. It’s the blockade preventing a market, salon, or saloon from entering a neighborhood. It’s the prohibitor of affordable housing. There are many reasons to abolish zoning.
Nolan Gray’s latest book is next in my reading queue: Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How To Fix It. I’m looking forward to his defense and receipts for making this claim:
Zoning is not a good institution gone bad. On the contrary, zoning is a mechanism of exclusion designed to inflate property values, slow the pace of new development, segregate cities by race and class, and enshrine the detached single‐family house as the exclusive urban ideal.
Zoning has an ugly history that students of planning know all about. Even professionals like me, who never took a planning class in college and were clueless about planning history, had to learn about case history and zoning practice in order to become certified by AICP. Professionals know it was used, is used, and will forever be used as a weapon.
There’s a Michigan court case that illustrates one new creative way for ne'er do wells to encroach on others.
Zoning enforcement is being used as an excuse for unlawful surveillance.
Last year, the White House published a lengthy blog piece about the effects of zoning on racial discrimination in the housing market. Going back a few decades you’ll find explicit descriptions of “those people,” and it varied from town to town. Targets of zoning included all types of outsiders. The current case in Michigan isn’t about racial discrimination, but it enables abuse of "those people" by getting around the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Perhaps most troubling about Michigan’s spy-in-the-sky is the ruling by one of the appellate court judges. Her comments invite other people to abuse zoning ordinances. Neighbors who don’t like the people next door will no longer need to be reigned in by due process when they can just launch their own investigation over fences and through windows.
Remember, none of the issues in this court case were visible to the public. You couldn’t see any offense driving by their property.
Journalist Scott Shackford summed up the Michigan zoning enforcement ruling like this:
…remarkably, the court believes that a violation of a constitutional right is not nearly as important as enforcing zoning rules, and so the illegally acquired evidence may be used.
Seemingly boring zoning ordinances are wildly important. Don’t sleep on this one.
If you’re a member of the American Planning Association, try to get these issues on the agenda of your next conference. It's perfect for the ethics session because it’s relevant to any type of jurisdiction. Whether or not you agree with the homeowners in the Michigan case is irrelevant. Wrestle with how zoning enforcement has been abused in the past, how it’s being abused right now, and if minor reforms are remotely effective compared to abolition.
Read more about the "we'll snoop when we want" case, and please, abolish zoning.