December 19, 2019
As the side of U-Haul vans running up and down the I-5 corridor proclaim, “I Bet You didn’t Know” that for the 12th year in a row Utah is ranked number one in terms of growth in the United States. It is closely followed by Florida, Texas and Idaho (all red states). As far as the left coast (Washington, Oregon & California) is concerned, you can forget it (Newsmax 12/15/19).
Why is this you ask? In my opinion, it is in large part because the state’s politicians do most things right where business is concerned. Unlike Oregon, they aren’t in a rush to show up in the WSJ as “The Rent Control State.” Policies regarding business, development and taxation are thoughtful and balanced. Legislators are not driven by an anti-development agenda that insists on vilifying landlords, stripping them of control over their private property, then blaming them for the expensive housing that comes in its wake.
And unlike west coast states, I believe Utah is not up to its eyeballs in a failed three decades old experiment in discarding bourgeois norms in favor of alternative lifestyles that promote joblessness, vagrancy, drug use and squalor.
To add insult to injury, the Portland City Council now has a measure under consideration that would require new development to provide living space dedicated to the homeless. If this passes muster, when buying your cool condo in the Pearl you can look forward to rubbing shoulders with the flotsam and jetsam of the streets.
Think it can’t get worse? Seattle area homeless director, Kira Zylstra just resigned in the wake of a scandal that had her King County public housing agency hiring and paying a transgender stripper, Beyonce Black St. James, to perform at a public meeting where she danced, twerked and kissed her way through the crowd (Fox News 12/12/2019).
Finally, it is my opinion that landlords should not expect any help from the courts with regard to protection of private property. In a new ruling “the Supreme Court effectively mandated continued legal tolerance for homelessness across major cities on the West Coast of the United States.” (Fox News 12/18/2019). I believe, in refusing to hear a challenge to a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that holds Americans have a right to sleep on the streets and anything counter to this is “cruel and unusual punishment” the Supreme Court has effectively damned many of America’s cities to a continuation of this human plague.
Why would any income property owner in his/her right mind want to continue operating in an environment of moral anarchy such as this? In my opinion the lunatics now have more rights in the asylum than the warders. Is it past time to find a new home?
Fortunately, if suitable, DSTs may be a potential strategy to allow accredited investors to do just this. They can leave their local markets which, in my opinion of some, may be rendered dysfunctional and increasingly unprofitable by the unhinged left and relocate to low/no tax red states which, in my opinion have not yet been run into the ground by our current generation of addled social justice warriors.
Sadly, the Seattle, Portland and San Francisco’s of our youth are just not the same anymore. So why are you staying?
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