[mattnewton]

I think the root of this is treating housing an asset, which justifies all kinds of arguments. My house would probably increase in value a lot if I bulldozed all the others and replaced them with public gardens. The sane place for me to draw the line is where the property ends.

[xyzzyz]

What a great answer to losing a great deal of money: just don’t treat it as an asset! Just ignore the loss, who cares! Sure it’s nice being wealthy, ain’t it.

[mattnewton]

I’m not saying to ignore the loss, I am saying to limit people’s ability to use the government to protect their asset value by mandating what others do with their property. In my view too many municipalities treat decrease in asset values like a kind of pollution that leaks from your property into the surrounding spaces, and use that logic to force certain uses of people’a property. But unlike physical pollutants that leave properties, the decrease in property value is often a nebulous and subjective force, and enforcement boils down to enforcing conformity with the majority. The harms are nebulously defined and the slope is so slippery that you have neighborhoods where they have slid all the way into mandating color pallets and lawn type and length.

This kind of system doesn’t let people do something as simple as postpone repairs until they can get favorable financing, and ends up a tax on the poor or different to protect an asset for the majority landowners in my view.