The American dream is built on property rights - why have we forgotten that?

Several years ago, an author defended looting in an NPR interview by arguing, "It's just property. It's not actually hurting any people." That justification stayed with me. How many Americans have forgotten that private property is how human beings implement their freedom in the world?

Liberty is not just the freedom to think but also to do - to pursue happiness through the fruits of your own labor. The ability to acquire and use property is the source of personal independence. It's how men and women exercise the power to shape their lives.

When Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" he and other American revolutionaries understood that liberty requires security in your person and property. They believed, as Thomas Jefferson would later put it, that a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another...

And yet, despite the property protections written into the Constitution, Americans have allowed property rights to fall to second-class status - perhaps believing no one is truly "hurt" by the loss of property.

In my two decades in public interest law, I've met homeowners, business owners, farmers, ranchers, and countless others who were hurt when the government prevented them from using their own property. For each, the loss was a loss of liberty.

Take California homeowner George Sheetz. When he applied for a permit to install a manufactured home on his empty land, El Dorado County imposed an exorbitant $23,420 "impact fee." George, in his sixties, had spent decades working his way up from a $5-an-hour laborer to the head of his own contracting company. It had taken him three years to pay off his land. The house he was trying to build wasn't just a house - it never is - but a new home where he and his wife planned to raise their grandson. By making it difficult for George to build on his own land, El Dorado County was violating his right to shape his own life. (The Supreme Court unanimously ruled for George in an initial win that holds legislative exactions to the same constitutional standard as administrative exactions. George's case now continues in the trial court.)

Or take property owners who've been forced to host unwanted tenants and squatters - people like John Williams, a Bay Area duplex owner who struggled for years with a non-paying tenant after Alameda County imposed an eviction moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic. The moratorium lasted three years, and John - whose entire life savings were wrapped up in the duplex and who hoped to leave the Bay Area - was trapped.

Even restrictions that seem small can have huge consequences for families. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are small, independent structures added to residential properties. Sometimes called "granny flats," ADUs can be life-changing for a family: They can allow a child to grow up with a grandparent living next door. But the government routinely makes it difficult for homeowners to build. Steve and Karen Reinecke, a Laguna Beach couple, are suing the California Coastal Commission after it blocked their ADU plans. At stake is not just the small structure they wish to build but the future they envision for their family.

In his speech 250 years ago, Patrick Henry said, "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past." The past of this country shows property rights are the foundation of individual liberty. My own experience with clients suggests the government has become far too willing to infringe on people's ability to acquire and use property - forgetting, perhaps, the real cost to people's freedom and flourishing.

Steven D. Anderson is president and CEO at Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that defends Americans' liberty against government overreach and abuse.