Urban Homesteading
Pres. Bush has proposed an Urban Homesteading Act to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. Federal land would be allocated by lottery to people who lost homes and property in the hurricane. There weren't a lot of details in the speech, here's the main discussion:
Economic historians like Richard Stroup, our own PJ, and Terry Anderson (all from PERC) have done a great deal to sort out homesteading. Stroup refers to it as "buying misery with land" because the original homesteading acts granted land to people who occupied it before it was economically feasible to do so, resulting in the use of the land to "purchase" the misery of the homesteaders. Nonetheless, it did privatize 214 million acres of federal land.
Prof. Stroup notes that
Richard L. Stroup, Buying Misery with Federal Land, 57 PUBLIC CHOICE 69, 76 (1988).
The lottery proposed by President Bush as part of the Urban Homesteading Act isn't a great way to give away value, as it is unlikely that a lottery that precludes nonprice competition will be used. There is also no relationship between winning a lottery and making use of the land in a productive manner. Moreover, government giveaways tend to attract fraud.
(Of course, a good case can be made that simply giving away government land is a good idea because private owners are far more likely to make good use of it than leaving it as a vacant lot - which is where a lot of urban land owned by governments is. That's another issue, however.)
Governments, particularly local governments and state governments, have a lot of land (and could have more if they foreclosed on unpaid taxes in urban areas). Giving that land to people harmed by Katrina is a good idea.
At least in my home county (Lorain County, Ohio) the primary problem for the local Habitat for Humanity chapter is a lack of land to build on. If an Urban Homesteading Act got land into the hands of people qualified for Habitat homes and President Bush challenged the nation's houses of worship to take on Habitat projects, a lot of houses could get build quite quickly. But there is no reason to limit this to the directly affected areas - idle government land in urban areas around the country could go into a land bank available for Habitat-qualified families. Since Habitat is very good at picking people, that might be an adequate screening mechanism to avoid buying misery with urban homesteading.
And to help lower-income citizens in the hurricane region build new and better lives, I also propose that Congress pass an Urban Homesteading Act. Under this approach, we will identify property in the region owned by the federal government, and provide building sites to low-income citizens free of charge, through a lottery. In return, they would pledge to build on the lot, with either a mortgage or help from a charitable organization like Habitat for Humanity. Home ownership is one of the great strengths of any community, and it must be a central part of our vision for the revival of this region.
Economic historians like Richard Stroup, our own PJ, and Terry Anderson (all from PERC) have done a great deal to sort out homesteading. Stroup refers to it as "buying misery with land" because the original homesteading acts granted land to people who occupied it before it was economically feasible to do so, resulting in the use of the land to "purchase" the misery of the homesteaders. Nonetheless, it did privatize 214 million acres of federal land.
Prof. Stroup notes that
It is difficult to give away value systematically, since nonprice competition for the value, unlike competition in exchange (bidding, for example), will tend to waste resources up to, or even past the point where the waste is equivalent in value to the rents sought.
Richard L. Stroup, Buying Misery with Federal Land, 57 PUBLIC CHOICE 69, 76 (1988).
The lottery proposed by President Bush as part of the Urban Homesteading Act isn't a great way to give away value, as it is unlikely that a lottery that precludes nonprice competition will be used. There is also no relationship between winning a lottery and making use of the land in a productive manner. Moreover, government giveaways tend to attract fraud.
(Of course, a good case can be made that simply giving away government land is a good idea because private owners are far more likely to make good use of it than leaving it as a vacant lot - which is where a lot of urban land owned by governments is. That's another issue, however.)
Governments, particularly local governments and state governments, have a lot of land (and could have more if they foreclosed on unpaid taxes in urban areas). Giving that land to people harmed by Katrina is a good idea.
At least in my home county (Lorain County, Ohio) the primary problem for the local Habitat for Humanity chapter is a lack of land to build on. If an Urban Homesteading Act got land into the hands of people qualified for Habitat homes and President Bush challenged the nation's houses of worship to take on Habitat projects, a lot of houses could get build quite quickly. But there is no reason to limit this to the directly affected areas - idle government land in urban areas around the country could go into a land bank available for Habitat-qualified families. Since Habitat is very good at picking people, that might be an adequate screening mechanism to avoid buying misery with urban homesteading.
Posted by Andy Morriss on
Monday September 19, 2005 at 7:19pm