As reported by the Waterloo Chronicle on August 15, 2012, in their article, A better way:
“She now goes out of her way to avoid the Northdale neighbourhood and the surrounding area because she can’t stand the look of the bland, characterless apartments currently being built there.“
“Yet while city staff and some councillors say the city must walk a fine line to balance the enforcement of visual and aesthetic guidelines with the rights of developers — even going so far to consider using millions of dollars in incentives to rebuild Northdale — there are some builders in the city who have already taken that next step without a handout from the city.“
If Waterloo City Council really cared about the property rights of individuals, they wouldn’t take millions of dollars in the form of property taxes in order to redistribute them to other property owners. Particularly, I see favouritism toward well-monied property owners, but it’s become so commonplace these days, even when it’s as blatant as taking money from the unemployed and underemployed for something as blatant as video game research, as I previously documented in my article, Canadian government calls for austerity, awards $5.8 million for video game research.
The last sentence of the paragraph I quoted shows that private developers can succeed in spite of regressive policies such as the one Waterloo City Council has floated.
[…] Whether the provincial legislature should bar municipal governments, like Waterloo’s, from redistributing private property, as I had discussed in my article, Waterloo City Council’s mixed message on property rights. […]
A link to my article was provided by someone as a comment to the Waterloo Chronicle article.