These sorts of land use restrictions should be illegal. It's basically a corporation trying to act as a pseudogovernment, enforcing regulations on land that they no longer own themselves.
One could argue that HOAs are kind of a similar issue, acting like a pseudogovernment, with restrictions on housing passing on down indefinitely, even to new owners who may not have wanted to agree to them (but with housing being as constrained as it is, you may not always have a realistic choice).
As a general rule, prior owners probably shouldn't be getting a say in what future owners do with land. Why? Because land is inherently limited in a way in which most other property is not, which reduces the ability of new entrants to 'disrupt' the market by offering people more choice.
If my town only has one car dealership with shitty business practices, no biggie, it's not too hard to go to another town and buy a car, then bring it back. But I can't buy land and bring it back to use it, I'm stuck with whatever's already there.
It seems they already are illegal, at least in some jurisdictions.
> "In June, for instance, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is also litigating against the merger, fined Albertsons $25,000 for imposing a land use restriction on a store it sold in 2018 in a low-income section of Bellingham, Washington. As part of the sale, the supermarket giant put a requirement on the deed that no grocery store could open there until 2038. Ferguson found this provision was a violation of the state antitrust law."
The fine imposed doesn't seem all that significant though.
Perhaps they could also be prosecuted under federal antitrust law?
> These sorts of land use restrictions should be illegal
An easier solution is mandatory sunsets after a period of time. Because the flip side of making them illegal is you'll have a lot more land with conservation easements being exploited for resources.
This kind of reminds me of when airspace was separated from Land property rights. There doesn't necessarily need to be any underlying logic or consistency, so a very tailored legal interpretation could be formed in theory.
That said, I think I'm much more practical solution is to focus on the buyer's rights and non-competitive behavior then limiting sellers rights. It makes intuitive sense that people would be able to option or sell indefinite use rights if they own the thing itself. It is less intuitive that individuals have a right to aggregate such options for Monopoly.
Now that I think about it, it seems there could be some comparison to the corner crossing cases that are being litigated too
JumpCrisscross, what do you think of the suggestion elsewhere in this thread[1] to tax the value of that restrictive covenant/easement?
Only saw that idea just now and it seems interesting enough to investigate further. I'm not a tax guy though so don't know if I'm missing something obvious.
That is indeed a downside, but the expectation there should be that the government should be restricting resource exploitation where that's undesirable.
There is a difference with an HOA. The HOA can be removed if enough members agree. It's not a restriction added by a past owner that can't be removed by the current owner.
It's not really capitalism, but its late stage cancerous form, where businesses grow too big (too close to monopolies) and go unchecked, so the markets start to fail because the competition is killed.
I could be wrong, but I think property use restrictions are actually more of a socialist concept. When done right, they're meant to protect others (aka society, in general - not some businesses that don't like having competitors across the street) from various harms, such as emissions, noise, overcrowding or things like that. In other words, not about what goes on at some property, but what happens to the outside because of it. But as the uncontrolled abuse grew unchecked, it became something else entirely.
This stuff, together with non-competes and exclusivity agreements is something different. I don't know what it is, but it's neither capitalism nor socialism "as they were well-meant", but rather a weird amalgamation of perverted concepts from both, leading to both erosion of healthy markets (so, harming capitalism) and degradation of life quality (so, harming socialism).
It's literally just regulatory capture. It has nothing to do with capitalism.
In a truly capitalistic economy, there would be no regulations preventing competitors from coming in and creating competition. The propaganda doesn't have to be good when nobody understands what is and isn't capitalism anyways.
I'm having a hard time parsing what you mean. Are you saying "capitalism did it therefore this is good" and suggesting that people disagreeing are victims of "propaganda"?
How are HOAs any different than a city council, except on a smaller scale? In both cases they're democratically elected, and they enact restrictions that can't be opted out of.
HOAs often enacts rules that would be illegal for a city council to enact. (between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected by). Courts have reigned in some of that, but there is still a lot that a HOA can do.
HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be in charge and so they are often forced to accept some busybody nobody really likes because at least that person wants the job. As you get larger you get a choice of qualified people for the job (but of course also large enough for corruption to take effect).
If apartment buildings are banned in 96% of residential land in California, with most of the 4% already built up with apartments, isn't that pretty similar to the commercial land use situation in Mammoth, CA?
Indeed artificial housing supply restrictions are about 100000000% more important. Alas, a portion of the progressive left was co-opted by the housing barons many decades ago. I believe California voters would be more progressive otherwise.
Here in SF, a good example is the leading progressive mayoral candidate, Peskin. He's basically a housing subversive. He'll pay lip service to it, then sabotage YIMBY efforts. Earlier this year he sponsored an ordinance blocking higher density in parts of his district. The current mayor vetoed it [1] but he got the board to override the veto [2].
The barons originally sold suburban supply restrictions as anti-sprawl measures, co-opting the greener factions of the left. Then they sold density restrictions as anti-traffic measures.
No suburbs + no density = no new housing.
Luckily this unholy coalition has started to crumble a few years ago. A large majority of Democrats is now in favor of more housing.
It's been rather shocking hearing one President candidate push Peskin-like policy (Trump), and the other the policies of Peskin's nemeses (Harris). Of course since Harris is from Oakland, slightly younger, and doesn't come from trust fund money, her background would be more likely to align with fair housing policy than Peskin.
"Refuses to acknowledge" is a really strange way to phrase the stance he put forward in the article linked in that tweet (I'm also confused why would you link to the tweet instead of the article in the first place?). I don't see a single place where he denies that land use restrictions can cause and/or amplify housing shortages. His point is that the lack of building supply is a national phenomena and thus there may be something more at work. I would argue that the housing finance middleman conglomerates who he claims are working to monopolize new housing supply are would likely be well versed at using NIMBY tendencies to achieve that goal. I would also argue that deflecting more blame for the situation onto local landowners instead of the large speculative land banks, would also be very valuable to such a cooperative oligoply.
So the majority of people want to keep it that way? Then it might just essentially boil down to democracy issues.
Companies on the other hand don’t get a vote. So if all grocery companies banded together and voted for a law to allow monopolies then it wouldn’t be the same thing as if all the humans voted for it. Companies do love to lobby though, but lobbying and voting are still two different things.
So if all the people in California banded together and voted to allow grocery chains to collaborate and split up areas to avoid competition, then I guess that would be mostly fine too.
One caveat is that these decisions are local, so people who have not had a chance to move in because there is no housing don't get a vote. Thus over time the law increasingly favors existing homeowners to the point where it completely fossilizes the community.
It's a good deal for the people who live there, but a bad one for the population as a whole as all of the prime real estate is taken and they're pushed out to places that nobody previously wanted to live.
If I had a good or easy solution I would offer it, but this is just a fundamental problem with democracy. Maybe if there was a fairly hostile state zoning board that vetoed most of the laws that prevent new construction, but there is almost no way to prevent that sort of position from being captured by the local interests and it would be very hard to staff since the person would be under both intense pressure and hate from nearly all communities in the state. Can you imagine being the guy who, through veto of the anti-construction law, let some skyscraper be built that blocks the ocean view of a few millionaire mansions? You'd be lucky to get out of town alive.
It's certainly not the majority of people that want it this way, and poll after poll shows that.
The local decisions on zoning are not made democratically, there's layers of representatives, and the representatives that get elected are some of the least reported-on and discussed elections in our society.
Land use decisions are made by small numbers of highly motivated people, that already have housing, and benefit financially from a shortage of housing. Just like the grocery stores here.
At the state level, regulation of land use is far more similar to poll results, and that regulation is reining in the abuses of local land use policy, forcing local decision makers to allow for more housing.
The state of democracy in the US into bad that you cannot really conclude anything about what “the majority of people want” from what the law happens to be.
You do not have enough information to tell if a majority of people want it that way.
Some of these zoning restrictions (don't know specifically about CA but true elsewhere) were put into place 60 years ago, when a majority wanted it that way (often for very racists and class warfare reasons), and they made it a requirement to have a supermajority to change it, not simple majority.
Thus, a majority could want to change, but are unable to reach the 2/3rds or whatever supermajority threshold is required.
Don't all political questions in the US boil down to democracy issues?
Rebuilding these as new modern apartments would make everyone a lot safer in case of an earthquake.
Also, we don't outlaw ways of life based on safety. For example, larger cities are far safer when it comes to fire deaths, than small towns, but we're not about to outlaw communities < 2,500 (see Figure 5):
It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down to whataboutism. It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another. It doesn't invalidate anything.
To be clear, I think he's very right in this article about abuse of monopoly. I just wish he'd cede that for California, and other highly in-demand areas, he's wrong to pooh-pooh the monopoly of land use, and it makes him seem a bit foolish to me.
If I'm ever inconsistent, I hope people point it out to me! This isn't "whataboutism" this is me changing the subject to a different area where I wish he'd be correct and use his considerable wonk-weight to correcting. Its not changing the subject to counter his point about grocery stores in Mammoth, California, it's more of a yes, and.
I'm also for improving the market forces in construction, and do devote some political effort to correcting exactly that problem.
Ha ha, my dude, the two kinds of land use restrictions are the same thing. He might not be a hypocrite per se but it’s meant to illuminate that his position boils down to “I’ve got mine.”
the difference is that in residential land use, the local residents are deciding themselves; with commercial land use, one company is deciding for the local residents
if the residents of one town were deciding that no housing could be built in another town, that would be closer to the commercial land use case made here
Is it that different though? Local residents seem to be deciding what kind of housing can be built on land that isn't theirs.
I can't build a fourplex on my lot, despite having the room for it, because people living elsewhere deemed it so. Instead it's a SFH with most of the lot wasted as setbacks, and is worth more than it should because of it.
The way I understand it... If Alice owns land and sells to Bob with some restrictions, that means Alice is still maintaining some ownership of the land. And the price that Bob pays is discounted from the otherwise fair market value, because it has those restrictions on it.
Then, if Bob sells it to Charlie, Alice still has an ownership stake (logically speaking) from the restrictions (whether it is land use, or mineral rights, or whatever). That is what keeps Charlie bound by those same restrictions. And again, the land isn't worth as much to Charlie as unrestricted land would be.
Now since Alice still has what could be considered ownership in the land (via the restrictions), then Alice should be paying some property tax based on that value she is retaining. And since taxes can be assessed based on the nature of how the property is used (such as granting a homestead exemption/discount for example), then if the current situation isn't benefiting the county or city, they can redefine their tax code to raise the portion that Alice would have to pay based on the ownership type.
I understand that the above is an ideal situation, and if Alice isn't getting a tax bill then that should probably be addressed by the local government.
You would end up with people paying property tax for their gym memberships and apartment rentals. Those too are contractual encumbrances that would impact a buyer
What is property ownership, really? Isn't it the exclusive right to do things with that property, and exclude random others from it? You buy a standard city lot, you have the right to build a house on it and to keep others off your property.
If Alice still has some say over what can be done with a property, even if it is through a contract with Bob, then how is Alice able to tell Charlie what he can do with the property once Bob sells it to Charlie? When Charlie never signed any paperwork with Alice? That sounds like something that comes with still having some level of ownership, even if the law that enables the restrictions to be enforced don't word it that way. And that is where I'm saying that the county can write into the tax law that this type of control is taxable with property tax (because even if it isn't technically ownership of the land, the right of enforcing the restrictions is still something that Alice owns).
I'd also like to see taxes on property that is underutilized (for the zoning that it is in). For example, some landlords would prefer to not rent out units rather than lower the rent to market rates (either housing or storefront properties), contributing to a constrained supply. If property taxes are raised on a unit that is unoccupied for a specific length of time, that would encourage the owner to rent it out at what the market is willing to pay instead of artificially keeping the rent higher and therefore the building empty.
If someone bought land with a deed restriction against locating a grocery store there, and they did locate a grocery store there, what would happen? Who has the right to enforce that restriction? Could it be overridden as a antitrust violation?
That happened with US vs. Eastern Mushroom Marketing (2005). [1] Eastern Mushroom Marketing was leasing, or buying options to lease, competing mushroom farms, and shutting them down. They lost.
The restriction is contractual in nature, and contracts are enforced by the courts system through civil litigation. The courts can overturn the contract on antitrust grounds, but that will never actually happen at scale, due to a set of interconnecting reasons:
1. Courts do not consider hypotheticals. In order to get the issue before a court, you have to actually buy the land and actually get sued over it.
2. Most people in a position to start up new grocery stores barely have enough capital to start one store, and cannot afford to tie it up in litigation for the next five to ten years.
3. Those in a position to attack the deed restriction are other large chains, who all have class solidarity and would never dare of attacking their own business practices.
Sometimes the logic behind #3 breaks - usually when a business in one industry tries to expand horizontally into other industries. This used to be a lot more common back when we had functioning caps on business consolidation, but now pretty much everyone owns everyone else. And sometimes someone decides to commit financial suicide, breaking the logic behind #2. But that brings us to the next reason:
4. Courts really, really do not like getting people out of contracts, even - and especially - really, really unfair ones.
Because...
0. Courts do not want to be arbiters of fairness, because fairness is arbitrary. Laws and contracts carry the illusion of impartiality, which is often good enough to trick otherwise bright minds into getting lost in the weeds of caselaw and clauses instead of asking "Hey, aren't we playing into someone else's hands"?
The part of this article about Mammoth is very off:
- The vacant K-Mart being referred to is not in Mammoth at all, it is in the nearest larger town of Bishop, a 45 minute drive away. There has never been a K-Mart in Mammoth.
- There is also a Grocery Outlet in Mammoth just down the street from Von's, so there's already more than one grocery store? It's a different store format but it's still a very legit full grocery. There is also a Grocery Outlet in Bishop.
It's an important topic but the Mammoth part is not sourced well.
>In Mammoth Lakes, there are two old K-Mart lots that could easily welcome competitive grocery stores
This sounds like Bishop, not Mammoth. Bishop is 30 minutes outside of Mammoth and is a little bit bigger. Mammoth does have two grocery stores now, for years it was just a Vons and now there is a Grocery Outlet as well.
Bishop has a Vons, Grocery Outlet, and a Smart and Final. Both cities have some hispanic grocers that I'm not familiar with. As far as I know though there has never been a K-Mart in Mammoth, and I've snowboarded there since ~2002.
Bishop did used to have a K-Mart and it is just sitting empty now.
Bozeman MT also has a huge lot being completely unused because it was a former K-Mart. And Bozeman is growing like nuts, I can't imagine there's nobody who wants the space.
Yeah it's definitely Mammoth. Mammoth Lakes, like many ski towns, has SF-level housing crisis.
Edit: Oops I mean Bishop. I'm too sleepy. The article is weird and mixing up the towns and their separate but related issues. I lived in the Bishop/Mammoth corridor for 2 winters.
Mammoth has never had a K-Mart. If you click through the links in the article you will see that they are about Bishop. The author of the article doesn't understand that these are different towns 40 minutes apart.
Maybe I live in a bubble (Southern California), but as far as I know none of my friends have any kinda trouble visiting any sort of grocery stores, Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, East Asian, etc. Where is this idea of yours coming from?
What kind of calculation goes into leasing something for 750k/year to keep competition away? Is it as simple as thinking that a competing store would cost them 750k/year or do other factors go into this?
Also, the mayor expressed his frustration but there is a lot that local government can do to combat this kind of thing. Even something as simple as getting a weekly farmers market started or actively looking for small time grocers would help. I think the mayor doesn't want to push too hard for whatever reason.
If it would cost $10M to build and open a new grocery store on an unimproved lot, that's only a 7.5% rate of return to force your competition to lay out $10M to open a store, at which point, you could probably convert your lease into an operating store for around $1M or less of capital and compete to ensure that they could never show a positive return on the overall move.
Readit News
One could argue that HOAs are kind of a similar issue, acting like a pseudogovernment, with restrictions on housing passing on down indefinitely, even to new owners who may not have wanted to agree to them (but with housing being as constrained as it is, you may not always have a realistic choice).
As a general rule, prior owners probably shouldn't be getting a say in what future owners do with land. Why? Because land is inherently limited in a way in which most other property is not, which reduces the ability of new entrants to 'disrupt' the market by offering people more choice.
If my town only has one car dealership with shitty business practices, no biggie, it's not too hard to go to another town and buy a car, then bring it back. But I can't buy land and bring it back to use it, I'm stuck with whatever's already there.
> "In June, for instance, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is also litigating against the merger, fined Albertsons $25,000 for imposing a land use restriction on a store it sold in 2018 in a low-income section of Bellingham, Washington. As part of the sale, the supermarket giant put a requirement on the deed that no grocery store could open there until 2038. Ferguson found this provision was a violation of the state antitrust law."
The fine imposed doesn't seem all that significant though.
Perhaps they could also be prosecuted under federal antitrust law?
Now anyone can file the same suit and they'll need to settle.
An easier solution is mandatory sunsets after a period of time. Because the flip side of making them illegal is you'll have a lot more land with conservation easements being exploited for resources.
That said, I think I'm much more practical solution is to focus on the buyer's rights and non-competitive behavior then limiting sellers rights. It makes intuitive sense that people would be able to option or sell indefinite use rights if they own the thing itself. It is less intuitive that individuals have a right to aggregate such options for Monopoly.
Now that I think about it, it seems there could be some comparison to the corner crossing cases that are being litigated too
I.e. easements that come from law rather than seller stipulation? Seems an easy distinction to make.
Only saw that idea just now and it seems interesting enough to investigate further. I'm not a tax guy though so don't know if I'm missing something obvious.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42046657
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
I could be wrong, but I think property use restrictions are actually more of a socialist concept. When done right, they're meant to protect others (aka society, in general - not some businesses that don't like having competitors across the street) from various harms, such as emissions, noise, overcrowding or things like that. In other words, not about what goes on at some property, but what happens to the outside because of it. But as the uncontrolled abuse grew unchecked, it became something else entirely.
This stuff, together with non-competes and exclusivity agreements is something different. I don't know what it is, but it's neither capitalism nor socialism "as they were well-meant", but rather a weird amalgamation of perverted concepts from both, leading to both erosion of healthy markets (so, harming capitalism) and degradation of life quality (so, harming socialism).
In a truly capitalistic economy, there would be no regulations preventing competitors from coming in and creating competition. The propaganda doesn't have to be good when nobody understands what is and isn't capitalism anyways.
HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be in charge and so they are often forced to accept some busybody nobody really likes because at least that person wants the job. As you get larger you get a choice of qualified people for the job (but of course also large enough for corruption to take effect).
If you were to draw a comparison, HOAs are far more consensual.
https://x.com/matthewstoller/status/1824155610201432264
If apartment buildings are banned in 96% of residential land in California, with most of the 4% already built up with apartments, isn't that pretty similar to the commercial land use situation in Mammoth, CA?
Here in SF, a good example is the leading progressive mayoral candidate, Peskin. He's basically a housing subversive. He'll pay lip service to it, then sabotage YIMBY efforts. Earlier this year he sponsored an ordinance blocking higher density in parts of his district. The current mayor vetoed it [1] but he got the board to override the veto [2].
The barons originally sold suburban supply restrictions as anti-sprawl measures, co-opting the greener factions of the left. Then they sold density restrictions as anti-traffic measures.
No suburbs + no density = no new housing.
Luckily this unholy coalition has started to crumble a few years ago. A large majority of Democrats is now in favor of more housing.
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2024/03/14/san-francisco-breed-peskin...
[2] https://sfist.com/2024/03/26/supervisors-override-breeds-vet...
Companies on the other hand don’t get a vote. So if all grocery companies banded together and voted for a law to allow monopolies then it wouldn’t be the same thing as if all the humans voted for it. Companies do love to lobby though, but lobbying and voting are still two different things.
So if all the people in California banded together and voted to allow grocery chains to collaborate and split up areas to avoid competition, then I guess that would be mostly fine too.
It's a good deal for the people who live there, but a bad one for the population as a whole as all of the prime real estate is taken and they're pushed out to places that nobody previously wanted to live.
If I had a good or easy solution I would offer it, but this is just a fundamental problem with democracy. Maybe if there was a fairly hostile state zoning board that vetoed most of the laws that prevent new construction, but there is almost no way to prevent that sort of position from being captured by the local interests and it would be very hard to staff since the person would be under both intense pressure and hate from nearly all communities in the state. Can you imagine being the guy who, through veto of the anti-construction law, let some skyscraper be built that blocks the ocean view of a few millionaire mansions? You'd be lucky to get out of town alive.
The local decisions on zoning are not made democratically, there's layers of representatives, and the representatives that get elected are some of the least reported-on and discussed elections in our society.
Land use decisions are made by small numbers of highly motivated people, that already have housing, and benefit financially from a shortage of housing. Just like the grocery stores here.
At the state level, regulation of land use is far more similar to poll results, and that regulation is reining in the abuses of local land use policy, forcing local decision makers to allow for more housing.
Some of these zoning restrictions (don't know specifically about CA but true elsewhere) were put into place 60 years ago, when a majority wanted it that way (often for very racists and class warfare reasons), and they made it a requirement to have a supermajority to change it, not simple majority.
Thus, a majority could want to change, but are unable to reach the 2/3rds or whatever supermajority threshold is required.
Don't all political questions in the US boil down to democracy issues?
Bullshit. Their money holds more value than any vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_story_building
Rebuilding these as new modern apartments would make everyone a lot safer in case of an earthquake.
Also, we don't outlaw ways of life based on safety. For example, larger cities are far safer when it comes to fire deaths, than small towns, but we're not about to outlaw communities < 2,500 (see Figure 5):
https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-re...
If I'm ever inconsistent, I hope people point it out to me! This isn't "whataboutism" this is me changing the subject to a different area where I wish he'd be correct and use his considerable wonk-weight to correcting. Its not changing the subject to counter his point about grocery stores in Mammoth, California, it's more of a yes, and.
I'm also for improving the market forces in construction, and do devote some political effort to correcting exactly that problem.
That's not whataboutism, it's inconsistency, and it's worth pointing out.
>It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another.
but wouldn't you rather be right on both? "but I'm at least right on one" seems like a pretty low bar to aim for.
>It doesn't invalidate anything.
Did OP imply otherwise?
Deleted Comment
if the residents of one town were deciding that no housing could be built in another town, that would be closer to the commercial land use case made here
I can't build a fourplex on my lot, despite having the room for it, because people living elsewhere deemed it so. Instead it's a SFH with most of the lot wasted as setbacks, and is worth more than it should because of it.
Then, if Bob sells it to Charlie, Alice still has an ownership stake (logically speaking) from the restrictions (whether it is land use, or mineral rights, or whatever). That is what keeps Charlie bound by those same restrictions. And again, the land isn't worth as much to Charlie as unrestricted land would be.
Now since Alice still has what could be considered ownership in the land (via the restrictions), then Alice should be paying some property tax based on that value she is retaining. And since taxes can be assessed based on the nature of how the property is used (such as granting a homestead exemption/discount for example), then if the current situation isn't benefiting the county or city, they can redefine their tax code to raise the portion that Alice would have to pay based on the ownership type.
I understand that the above is an ideal situation, and if Alice isn't getting a tax bill then that should probably be addressed by the local government.
You would end up with people paying property tax for their gym memberships and apartment rentals. Those too are contractual encumbrances that would impact a buyer
Economic theory on tax incidence says otherwise. Land, being inelastic, takes the tax burden. Land tax cannot be passed on to tenants or businesses.
She owns specific rights separate from the ownership of the land.
If Alice still has some say over what can be done with a property, even if it is through a contract with Bob, then how is Alice able to tell Charlie what he can do with the property once Bob sells it to Charlie? When Charlie never signed any paperwork with Alice? That sounds like something that comes with still having some level of ownership, even if the law that enables the restrictions to be enforced don't word it that way. And that is where I'm saying that the county can write into the tax law that this type of control is taxable with property tax (because even if it isn't technically ownership of the land, the right of enforcing the restrictions is still something that Alice owns).
I'd also like to see taxes on property that is underutilized (for the zoning that it is in). For example, some landlords would prefer to not rent out units rather than lower the rent to market rates (either housing or storefront properties), contributing to a constrained supply. If property taxes are raised on a unit that is unoccupied for a specific length of time, that would encourage the owner to rent it out at what the market is willing to pay instead of artificially keeping the rent higher and therefore the building empty.
That happened with US vs. Eastern Mushroom Marketing (2005). [1] Eastern Mushroom Marketing was leasing, or buying options to lease, competing mushroom farms, and shutting them down. They lost.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2005/02/10/05-2495...
1. Courts do not consider hypotheticals. In order to get the issue before a court, you have to actually buy the land and actually get sued over it.
2. Most people in a position to start up new grocery stores barely have enough capital to start one store, and cannot afford to tie it up in litigation for the next five to ten years.
3. Those in a position to attack the deed restriction are other large chains, who all have class solidarity and would never dare of attacking their own business practices.
Sometimes the logic behind #3 breaks - usually when a business in one industry tries to expand horizontally into other industries. This used to be a lot more common back when we had functioning caps on business consolidation, but now pretty much everyone owns everyone else. And sometimes someone decides to commit financial suicide, breaking the logic behind #2. But that brings us to the next reason:
4. Courts really, really do not like getting people out of contracts, even - and especially - really, really unfair ones.
Because...
0. Courts do not want to be arbiters of fairness, because fairness is arbitrary. Laws and contracts carry the illusion of impartiality, which is often good enough to trick otherwise bright minds into getting lost in the weeds of caselaw and clauses instead of asking "Hey, aren't we playing into someone else's hands"?
- The vacant K-Mart being referred to is not in Mammoth at all, it is in the nearest larger town of Bishop, a 45 minute drive away. There has never been a K-Mart in Mammoth.
- There is also a Grocery Outlet in Mammoth just down the street from Von's, so there's already more than one grocery store? It's a different store format but it's still a very legit full grocery. There is also a Grocery Outlet in Bishop.
It's an important topic but the Mammoth part is not sourced well.
Deleted Comment
This sounds like Bishop, not Mammoth. Bishop is 30 minutes outside of Mammoth and is a little bit bigger. Mammoth does have two grocery stores now, for years it was just a Vons and now there is a Grocery Outlet as well.
Bishop has a Vons, Grocery Outlet, and a Smart and Final. Both cities have some hispanic grocers that I'm not familiar with. As far as I know though there has never been a K-Mart in Mammoth, and I've snowboarded there since ~2002.
Bishop did used to have a K-Mart and it is just sitting empty now.
> Vons started leasing one plot in 2019 when K-Mart went under, “holding the space hostage.” It now leases the other as well.
Edit: Oops I mean Bishop. I'm too sleepy. The article is weird and mixing up the towns and their separate but related issues. I lived in the Bishop/Mammoth corridor for 2 winters.
One thing I have noticed after moving to the US is that white Americans are terrified of going to ethnic grocers, it's pretty fascinating
Also, the mayor expressed his frustration but there is a lot that local government can do to combat this kind of thing. Even something as simple as getting a weekly farmers market started or actively looking for small time grocers would help. I think the mayor doesn't want to push too hard for whatever reason.