It’s my property, I should be able to do what I want

It’s my property, I should be able to do what I want

By Ralph Hardin Michael, I thought you conservative types were all about limited government? You don’t want the bureaucrats sticking their noses in our business telling us taxpayers what we can and can’t do, right?

Oh, wait… that’s only as long as things are going the way you like it.

So this fellow thinks that it’s a bad idea for the people in a community to be able to arbitrarily decide that this particular tract of land is only going to have 'this” kind of house and “those” kinds of houses can only be built way over there on that other tract of land, away from 'these” kinds of houses?

Sounds like a plan!

This Bart Hester guy, a Republican (like you!) says local governments setting home design standards is unfairly driving up home prices, particularly in the burgeoning Northwest Arkansas area.

OK, first off… what? What does “unfairly driving up home prices” even mean. If a house is too expensive for you…

buy a different house! I haven’t spent just a whole lot of time in God’s Country, AKA Northwest Arkansas, but is every house up there a quarter-million-dollar starter mansion? I’d guess not.

But he’s got a point. You see, what’s really happening isn’t that the market is certain communities is “driving up home prices,” it’s driving out certain types of people. 1 imagine that type of practice appeals to certain other types of people.

But even without all of that to consider, let’s look at this.

There are plenty of neighborhoods that have certain design regulations. And you know what? They suck!

You mention Germantown, so let’s take a look at the older parts of Germantown. In the neighborhoods and in the retail areas, it all looks exactly the same, like a paint-bynumbers, every-brick-the-same-color washed out pallette of muted sameness. If it was a romance nover, it’d be “Fifty Shades of Beige” over there.

Michael, you say these politicians “will come up with ways to shove their sometimes personal agenda down our throats.” Isn’t that exactly what these “design regulations” are doing? Aren’t they taking some small group of people’s ideas of what’s acceptable and aesthetically pleasing and forcing those ideas on anyone who has the privilege of buying a home in that neighborhood?

I’m going to quote you here. You’re upset because Hester wants to stop local lawmakers from being able to tell homeowners they can’t make their own decisions. You say he’s 'trying to convince his fellow lawmakers that such things like siding, roof design and the size of a garage should be left up to a homeowner based on what they can afford.”

Well, they should be!

If I’m spending MY money on MY house for me and MY family, what right do YOU have to tell me I can or can’t have a red front door or salmon bricks or a pink flamingo in by flower bed?

Last time I checked, this was still America, and your property rights end at the first blade of grass in MY yard.

“Home values in upper scale subdivisions would drastically drop if there weren’t specific building standards.” Where is the data to support this?

You say, “a homeowner who can afford a 4,000-squarefoot brick home with a three-car garage located on a required half-acre lot doesn’t want to invest in a neighborhood that permits the building of 1,500 square-foot, two bedroom homes with carports and vinyl siding.”

So? You don’t get to pick your neighbors.

You say every “progressive” city has scaled neighborhoods specifically designed for different income levels.

I thought “progressive” was one of those bad words like “liberal” or “tolerant”? Well, that’s largely true, but that’s at the discretion of the developer isn’t it? If I own a bunch of land and I want to build a bunch of houses on it, shouldn’t I be the one to decide if they’re going to be $100,000 homes on quarter-acre lots or $500,000 homes on one-acre lots?

Doesn’t it make sense on the developer’s part to decide what kind of neighborhood he or she is developing? And don’t you think the kind of person who has the wherewithal and the capital to develop a subdivision has the sense to build homes of comparable value and amenities adjacent to one another without some bureaucrat telling him the mailboxes all have to be black and 1.5 feet from the curb?