The Tonic for Property Rights
A restaurant named Tonic recently opened around the corner from my apartment complex in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood. The food is good and the service is better than expected for a new place. Tonic’s biggest hurdle since opening has been the District of Columbia’s zoning laws. More on that in a minute. To help explain the problem, I’ll start with the story of a past dispute involving a (fictional) local government official in a town that’s arguably more famous—and certainly more beloved—than Washington, DC.
In a 1997 episode of The Simpsons called “The Principal and the Pauper,” Springfield Elementary School’s longtime principal, Seymour Skinner, is exposed as an impostor when the real Sergeant Seymour Skinner returns after being interred in a North Vietnamese POW camp followed by years of forced labor in a Chinese sweatshop. (“It’s kind of a funny story,” the sergeant claimed.) The false Skinner leaves town briefly, only to return when the townspeople decide they prefer him to the real thing. Sergeant Skinner is then literally run out of town on the rails, and a local judge bestows the “name of Seymour Skinner, as well as his past, present, future, and mother” on the familiar impostor.
Defending his script against attacks from fans that objected to what they perceived as heretical tampering with an established character like Skinner, writer Ken Keeler explained:
In my opinion, this [episode] is about a community of people who like things just the way they are. Skinner’s not really close to these people. You know, he’s a minor character. But they get upset when someone comes in and says this is not really the way things are, and they run the messenger out of town on the rail. When the episode aired, lo and behold, a community of people who liked things just the way they are got mad. It never seems to have occurred to anyone that this episode is about the people who hate it.Community is problematic for libertarians. There’s a fine line between voluntary association and coercive collective. Minority groups tend to dominate communities precisely because they value the preservation of the status quo over all else, even the interests of individuals within such groups.
It’s community, not free markets, which create “free rider” problems. Zoning and “historic preservation” are perfect examples. The community wants a piece of land used in a certain manner—or preserve its existing use in perpetuity—but the cost falls entirely on the individual property owner. The zoning or preservation objective need not be essential to the community. Any change to the status quo, real or perceived, provides grounds for a community response.
This brings me back to Tonic. The restaurant opened two months ago without a city-mandated liquor license. Tonic could not even apply for a license because it occupies a parcel of land zoned “residential” by the District of Columbia, where apparently liquor cannot be sold. Curiously, there is a grocery store one block away that sells beer and wine, and George Washington University, which owns Tonic’s building, holds a liquor license for its Lisner Auditorium, also one block away.
Tonic’s owners say the lack of liquor impedes their business. I can testify firsthand to that. On two separate days that I ate at Tonic, one or more groups entered the restaurant then promptly left when they learned there was no alcohol. Tonic co-owner Jeremy Pollok told the local Current newspaper that the restaurant could lose more than $300,000 over three months due to District’s zoning rules.
Those rules allow two businesses within 400 feet of one another to hold liquor licenses of the same class and type. Although Tonic is within 400 feet of Lisner Auditorium, and Tonic seeks the same class of license as Lisner, the license would be for a different type—a restaurant versus a tavern or private club—so no dice.
(For all those leftists who insist the state must defend “consumer rights” against unscrupulous businesses, take note of how willing buyers and sellers are thwarted in the name of yet another collectivist principle.)
Relief may be on the way, however. Last month the D.C. Council approved temporary legislation eliminating the same-type requirement, allowing Tonic to finally apply for a license.
Some community activists are upset with this decision, fearing it sets a bad precedent that encourages other businesses to try and change zoning rules. Liquor licenses are frequently opposed on the grounds that they lead to excessive noise—and in community activism, the right to be free from noise trumps speech, due process, and certainly property.
Tonic’s potential happy ending certainly doesn’t negate the hundreds of other cases where D.C. government violates private property in the name of community. In the same local paper I cited above, other stories featured these examples of community activism:
- “The D.C. Board of Zoning voted Tuesday to reconsider its approval of a two-story addition atop a historic and generally beloved one-story grocery in Sheridan-Kalorama. The case has galvanized neighbors near California Street and Pehlps Place, and the decision reopens the fight against the project.”
- “Over the last six months, as George Washington University officials planned a new dormitory for their small Mount Vernon campus, they negotiated primarily with Berkeley Terrace residents . . . But the resulting agreement has angered others and may end up complicating a university request for an amendment to its campus plan, which is needed to construct the building.”
- “The D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board refused last week to allow a subdivision of a landmarked ‘mini-estate’ in Georgetown, jeopardizing a developer’s plan to build a luxury home at the rear of what is known as the Williams-Addison House or Friendly Estate.”
Comments (8)
Talking with some summer fellows yesterday, we were just reflecting on the peculiarity of this tendency. The problem is acute: if community democracy, in the sense of voting rights, were to prevail, there would be very few commercially zoned areas at all. You can almost always count on the "community" to be against commercial activity in a political sense. And yet as consumers, of course, they vote with their dollars to make commercial enterprise successful or not depending on the value of the firm to the community. So we have here a clear case where economic preferences and political preferences are utterly contradictory.
First, I can't entirely understand why the political preference is so pervasive. What explains it? Is it due to the perception that somehow commerce lowers surrounding property values? Is it an anti-market ideological tendency? Is it just the love of the status quo, as you suggest? I just don't know.
Second, is there a way to overcome these tendencies through education and explanation? They seem very ingrained. It strikes me that the lesson here is that political democracy should have nothing at all to do with deciding these questions. And this is the core problem with zoning laws: they substitute political for market decision making.
After all, the market yields many forms of private "zoning" - restrictions on what one can and cannot do with one's property (in my subdivision, I cannot put a car on blocks in my driveway, e.g, a rule that is not coercive because I agreed to it when I bought the house). The real problem with zoning is not that it restricts the uses of property but that it does so through this messy and distorting state system.
Published: July 11, 2007 7:59 AM
"First, I can't entirely understand why the political preference is so pervasive. What explains it? Is it due to the perception that somehow commerce lowers surrounding property values? Is it an anti-market ideological tendency? Is it just the love of the status quo, as you suggest? I just don't know."
In my experience here in DC, the argument almost mirrors the immigration debate. There's a fear that commerce draws in "undesirables" from outside the community while reducing the amount of residential space for established locals. (This is particularly of concern in a rent-controlled town like DC, where it's difficult to build new units.) Here in Foggy Bottom, the presence of George Washington University further exacerbates the locals, because every university development is considered an effort to "squeeze" the locals out in favor of students.
But as I said in my post, I think a lot of this comes down to love of the status quo for its own sake. When people enter a community, they expect that the community won't change substantially, so they get angry when someone puts up a new business and "alters" everyone's pre-existing perceptions.
I recall a recent Historic Preservation Board dispute when a popular local restaurant wanted to enclose its outdoor patio. This was rejected, not for zoning reasons, but because it would "destroy the historic sight lines" down the street that residents were accustomed to.
Published: July 11, 2007 8:15 AM
Foggy Bottom could sure use this sort of place, but I feel like anything the university does, no matter how tenuous its impact or big its benefit to the neighborhood, some Foggy Bottom folks would complain.
Published: July 11, 2007 12:03 PM
Hard to imagine that entrepreneurs are still willing to try to do business in the District of Columbia. It is a very difficult jurisdiction for so many reasons -- not just zoning and permit problems, as shown here, but also workers' compensation and taxes. Ugh. Go to the Commonwealth, entrepreneurs, where we welcome you!
Published: July 11, 2007 3:59 PM
I have to take issue with your use of the term community. Zoning and other such government controls on citizens actually drives wedges between neighbors rather than building a sense of community. You are not objecting to community in your piece but to activist control.
Capitalism at its core is all about community because the capitalist exists on the good will of the community.
The point has been made that neighborhoods in New Orleans did not feel a return of their community until the local Walmart and 7-11 opened back up.
We must not allow collectivists to confiscate the language too.
Published: July 11, 2007 4:08 PM
I'm all for the community controlling any property they want. That is - they are just as free to buy up any piece of property that comes up on the market as anyone else is. Home owners who own their own places, are just as free to join together in an association as anyone else is.
What? You say they can't afford that? Well, then it sounds to me like they are liars who are pretending to be richer than they are.
Published: July 12, 2007 12:02 AM
Which all begs the question... why open in such a place?... knowing full well the local collective will oppose you at every turn...
It's high time somebody sued the city to get rid of ABC control of other people's property...
Published: July 12, 2007 7:21 AM
If I was on a zoning board (unlikely - I read mises.org because I oppose the kind of things I'm proposing below), all buildings more than 20 years old would not be allowed to change unless they were completely tore down a rebuilt to modern insulation standards.
I'm tired of hearing people complain about the greedy oil companies charging $400/month for heat, when it is their own fault for living in such a bad house. I know people living in mansions twice the size of that house who pay $200/YEAR (not month, year!) for all their heating and cooling. The mansion is built with modern insulation and heating/cooling.
I would also only have two zones: heavy industrial, and everything else. A requirement for heavy industrial is you use/do something dangerious enough that a wide area evacuation is standard procedure if something goes wrong. (ie with chemicals)
People should be able to walk home from the local bar. It would make the streets a lot safer if you could get drunk and not have to drive back home.
Published: July 15, 2007 1:08 PM