The City of Pittsburgh is imploring a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit that claims an “inclusionary zoning law” supposedly meant to bolster “affordable housing” is an unconstitutional violation of due process.
Put another way, an illegal taking.
As the Post-Gazette reminds, the Builders Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in May, also claiming that it violates the state’s Home Rule and Optional Plans laws.
The city claims the complaint should be dismissed because nobody can yet claim actual harm from it.
Yet, that is.
But as the Builders Association correctly argues, the zoning law is unconstitutional on its face.
Clearly, when the city enforces such a regressive policy, and it fully plans to, not only does that constitute an illegal taking – that would be forcing a developer to sell and/or rent a dwelling below fair-market pricing and without any compensation to pay for the illegal taking – it clearly will result in less “affordable housing.”
That’s because prices for other units either will have to be raised to cover the costs of the government-mandated “lower-cost” housing units or won’t be built at all.
Which is a result that is the exact opposite of what “inclusionary zoning” claims to offer.
Here’s the bottom line on “inclusionary zoning,” the darling of contemporary “progressives,” from Joe Cortright, writing on the City Observatory website:
“(W)e’ve been highly skeptical of the effectiveness of inclusionary zoning. While inclusionary zoning gets top mention as a preferred policy by many affordable housing advocates, there’s precious little evidence that its ever had more than a token effect on the size of the housing affordability problem in any city.
“In addition, because inclusionary zoning requirements essentially shift the cost of housing subsidies onto new development, they raise its cost, and likely reduce the number of units that get built–which tends to aggravate housing shortages and further accelerate prices,” Cortright offered.
And that, he adds, wrecks “your housing market until it’s too late to do much about it.”
That sounds like “progressivism” at large, does it not?
Oh, by the way, the Pittsburgh Public Schools has appealed part of a Common Pleas Court ruling designed to stop some of the machinations being employed to tape over Allegheny County’s clearly broken property assessment system.
We’ll spare you the details here, but it is the latest example that bolsters support for state legislative action to mandate regular property reassessments for every Pennsylvania county, preferably every three years.
As the “system” – and we use that word loosely – now stands (or is it lying in a fetid open sewer), it clearly is unconstitutional for failing to abide by the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniformity Clause.
Until the Legislature acts, countless public and private dollars will be wasted defending and challenging an assessment system that can, and must, be fixed through regularly scheduled reassessments.
An Allegheny County judge refused to grant Fraport Pittsburgh a preliminary injunction to keep it on the job at Pittsburgh International Airport running the facility’s “air mall.” That, as Fraport’s lawsuit against the Allegheny County Airport Authority proceeds to trial.
Fraport won a temporary injunction after its June removal. Fraport alleges it got the authority’s boot on trumped-up security-issue allegations.
Despite the ruling, Common Pleas Judge Christine Ward did throw Fraport something of a victory – though possibly Pyrrhic — when she said that she has “serious concerns regarding the pretextual nature of the [authority’s] alleged defaults.”
“Whether the alleged events of default were material, whether they were sufficiently cured, or whether they were conjured by the [authority] to find a way out of its contractual obligations, are all issues that are better left to be resolved at trial,” the judge said.
As the P-G notes:
“Given that Judge Ward denied Fraport’s request for a preliminary injunction, that trial could be limited to what, if any, monetary damages the company is entitled to after being removed as the operator.”
And Judge Ward also wrote:
“Though the agreement at issue in this case is characterized as a leasehold, it is more in the nature of a commercial contract for services, the breach of which is adequately compensable with damages,” she wrote.
If the trial court determines the authority nixed its Fraport contract by the proverbial hook or by crook, Fraport could be in for a very large payday.
And that would be yet another black mark in a long history of black marks for the Airport Authority.
Fraport, on Friday, sought a stay of its termination pending an expedited appeal. It cited Ward ruling language suggesting Fraport could win its case on its merits.
Stay tuned.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
