An astonishing number of so-called conservatives continue to advocate socialism when it comes to land-use policies.

The free-market capitalist position is to recognize the property rights of individual land owners. If someone wants to build a granny flat (accessory dwelling unit) in their back yard, or replace their single-family house with a duplex or fourplex, the property owner has that right. Life, liberty, property are our fundamental rights, as John Locke recognized. “Without property rights, no other rights are possible,” as Ayn Rand wrote.

Sure, we need some broad guardrails to protect others’ rights—we can’t have a smelly pig farm or a noisy factory on a residential street—but putting up a residential duplex hardly infringes the rights of other residents.

Land-use socialists, on the other hand, think that your property rights should be subject to your nosey neighbors’ arbitrary demands. They infringe your property rights for the sake of whichever local demagogues claim to speak for the alleged collective will. They reject the mutual consent of free markets in favor of political force.

And don’t tell me you don’t “consent” to how your neighbor uses their property. Yes, if you live in a homeowners’ association, you have voluntarily given up some control over your own property in favor of contractually delimited community control. Outside of that context, though, you don’t properly get to consent to what sort of residential structures your neighbor builds on their own property, any more you get to consent to who your neighbor marries, how your neighbor worships, or where your neighbor works. My liberty does not require your consent.

Here is a quick test: Genuine consent involves discussion, persuasion, and voluntary choice. For example, if you don’t like how your neighbor is using their property, you can ask the neighbor to change, or you can offer to buy the property and do with it what you will. If you threaten to bring out armed government agents to stop your neighbor from using their property as they judge best, we are no longer talking about consent. We are talking about force.

Littleton Question 3A

Here is how Littleton Question 3A  starts off: “Shall Section 65.5. Preservation of Neighborhood Land Use Restrictions, be added to clarify the intent of the citizens to preserve single-family residential land use and ensure that current and future owners of property in certain residential zoning districts may rely on restrictions on land uses that protect their properties.”

Notice the intentional ambiguity of the term “their.” Whose property, precisely, is being protected, and from whom? What this language means, literally, is that some property owners in the area wish to forcibly impose their will on other property owners. This is the “protection” of the mafia. This ballot measure proposes the flagrant violation of people’s property rights.

Look, no one is trying to force anyone to add an ADU in the backyard or replace their single-family house with something else. If you’re happy with your house, you are free to leave it the way it is! Just because the zoning allows more options doesn’t mean any given property owner has to take advantage of those options. Again, the Littleton measure is about some people wanting to forcibly restrict their neighbors’ property rights.

The case for 3A is based on fear mongering. Here is how one one proponent of the measure from “Rooted in Littleton” pitched it: “It comes down to individual home rights. In our particular case, all of us moved to Littleton because we wanted to get away from the crime, traffic and pressures of downtown to have a more idyllic setting to raise kids and to live. This threatens to make Littleton an extension of downtown, to really densify and double or maybe triple the population of Littleton.”

There is no “right” of some homeowners to forcibly restrict how their neighbors use their property. There is no right to violate rights. Rooted in Littleton’s claim is analogous to saying that some married people have a “right” to deny the right of marriage to interracial or gay couples. The entire point of rights is that they free individuals from the arbitrary dictates of their neighbors.

Again, people have the right to associate in HOAs to limit development in their immediate neighborhood. I support that right. Outside of that context, individual property owners properly have the right to develop their property as they see fit (again, within broad rights-protecting guardrails).

The reference to “crime” is an obvious cover for loathing of people of modest means. What we’re talking about, precisely, is that less-wealthy people might move into ADUs or multi-family units. The notion that less-wealthy people tend toward criminality is shameful bigotry. Rooted in Littleton is just a front for exclusionary elitism, a new form of segregation. As for crime, an enlarged tax base would help fund more police.

The suggestion that the population of an established high-end residential neighborhood in Littleton might double or triple is laughable. A lot of people like their single-family homes and would opt to keep them. In those neighborhoods we’re talking about perhaps a slight increase in housing density.

And if there is a neighborhood in which housing liberty would lead to a doubling or tripling of the local population (doubtful), that could only be because the large majority of people in that particular neighborhood wish to upgrade. If so, why should elitist snobs from across town get to demand that some other neighborhood matches their own? And if we’re talking about undeveloped property, let the property owner decide how to develop it.

Thankfully, another organization, Vibrant Littleton, has sprung up to oppose land-use socialism (not that I agree with all of that group’s other positions).

Reject land-use socialism and the petty bigotries it manifests. Stand for land-use liberty.

Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.

Editor’s note: The opinions around Littleton 3A expressed here are those of the author, and do not represent the editorial stance of Complete Colorado.