Written by Michael Palomba
San Diego Mayoral candidate Barbara Bry is keen on taking away the rights of property owners in order to advance her homelessness agenda. In a recently published op-ed in the Times of San Diego, Bry talks about her fight to regulate how property owners can use their property.
She starts by claiming that “there is a continued refusal by the city administration and mayoral candidates Scott Sherman and Todd Gloria to acknowledge the obvious — the increase in short-term vacation rentals is one of the key drivers of these crises.”
Then, in typical Democrat fashion, she proposes a new law to correct what she feels is a problem. “An immediate change is needed—a law that requires all new apartments and homes, whether by discretionary or ministerial approval, be rented for at least a minimum of 30 days,” she contends.
Mayoral candidate @bry4sd writes in an op-ed that enforcing zoning laws on short-term rentals would bring 16,000 units back into the #SanDiego housing marketplace.https://t.co/mo6vdU9HRm pic.twitter.com/NohnlBxiiE
— Times of San Diego (@TimesofSanDiego) February 25, 2020
She goes on to blast current San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, as well as fellow candidates Scott Sherman and Todd Gloria. She rants that they “talk endlessly of lessening building restrictions and encouraging developers to build more, but neither acknowledges the obvious negative effect of STRs (short term rentals).”
However, there is one key issue that Bry seems to be forgetting: freedom.
We live in the freest country in the world, and Democrats like Bry are adamant about slapping restrictions on that freedom. Property owners worked hard to be able to afford their property. Why should Barbara Bry get to tell them that they can’t use their property as they please, so long as it’s not harming others? Did she put in the long, hard hours that everyday San Diegans did to afford their property? No. She’s simply the power-hungry liberal elitist who thinks she should be able to control how people live their lives.
She ends her rant by saying “it’s time to enforce our existing laws to make housing San Diegans a priority and to stop a multi-billion-dollar industry from taking advantage of our city.”
But what it’s actually time for is a realization. Too many people take our freedoms for granted and forget the true purpose of the government as delegated by the Constitution. The government is supposed to protect our freedoms, not restrict them. Banning short term rentals is a massive governmental overreach and severely infringes on property rights, something that Bry doesn’t even seem to believe in.
