The Private Property Rights Institute (PPRI) has launched a major national effort to help Americans retake control of their own privately owned land.
At the local level, government bureaucrats and small fry, do-nothing politicians frequently violate the same private property rights which have been fundamental to the United States since its founding. These petty tyrants use zoning boards, commissions, and other backroom processes to take away landowners’ rights, block critical infrastructure projects, and stop hardworking Americans from using their property as they see fit.
The PPRI’s message is very direct: “Without strong private property rights, you don’t own anything. If the government can tell you what you can and can’t do with your own land, that’s socialism – and we will not let that happen in America.”
“If the government can tell you what you can or cannot do with your own land, then you truly don’t really own it. The right to use, lease, build on or conserve your property is central to liberty and economic opportunity. When property rights are threatened, freedom itself is on the line,” PPRI Executive Director Charlie Kolean said during a recent Zoom meeting on property rights.
The PPRI has released a report where they chronicled their interactions with land owners in Michigan and Pennsylvania. They found that small farmers support energy infrastructure leasing projects such as wind, solar and storage, but barriers to qualify information are causing city and township officials to make regulatory decisions hindering the freedom of choice for farmers to embrace these solutions to rural poverty. The report suggests protecting landowner rights with legislation and creating clear ordinances that prevent restrictive zoning
HISTORICAL FOUNDATION
The freedom to do what one wishes with their own property, so long as it harms no one else, is so fundamental to Western thought and American society that some state constitutions, such as Virginia, explicitly grant that right, and John Locke–a philosopher whom the Founding Fathers all very much read and respected–determined property to be such a fundamental right that it is in the same vein as life and liberty.
If politicians and unelected bureaucrats can unilaterally revoke the revered right to property, what is to stop them from taking away any other fundamental or natural rights?
THE LOCALIZED TYRANNY OF ZONING BOARDS
While farmers and rural families are especially harmed by these bad actors in local government, any American from any walk of life can be victimized by the tyranny of the zoning boards.
In Michigan, a farmer wanted to use some of his low-yield land for solar energy development. This would have allowed him to pay his property taxes and keep the farm which had been in his family for generations. But should local government and bureaucratic red tape made this into a nightmare for the farmer.
It’s impossible to even quantify how many families have lost opportunities, how many critical infrastructure projects have been shot down and how much progress has been halted because of this assault on Americans’ property rights. Yet local officials either do not understand the meaning of property rights, or they don’t care. PPRI’s fight with them is a fight on behalf of all American landowners.
