Watch Your Honolulu Property Rights

June 27th, 2008 categories: Honolulu Real Estate 101, Rants & Riffs

I am a Honolulu Realtor because I have seen how home ownership changes the lives of those who own them. Certainly, the financial aspect of potential long-term appreciation is enticing, but property rights are fundamental to the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. One of our great founders, James Madison, writes about our property rights.

“In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. . . . Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”

June 23 is the 3-year anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that should raise a cry from all of us. Traditionally, government can “take” your property if there is a “public use” for which your property is needed (i.e. roads, sewers, parks, etc.). However, in 2005, a decision known as KELO, the Supreme Court allowed the City of New London to take a property for development by a private developer for private use. The logic behind the decision was that the area was blighted and that the “public” would benefit from the renewal of the area. Since I am not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional scholar visit a post by Hugh Hewitt. He does a great job explaining how our constitutional rights have been trampled.

Today’s picture was taken from the lanai of a Tahitienne Cooperative unit for sale on the Gold Coast.