“You sign an agreement with someone”
that they were forced to sign via government guns. Walter Williams’ article was spot on the other day. Fascism is when the government can force property owners to take certain actions and then they can blame the property owner for the problems that are caused.....
In fact, he'd probably agree that if you want to have residential and industrial properties butt up against each other there probably ought to be some agreed upon rules for doing that.
You might ask him next time you see him.
In this case we had a change of use from industrial to residential. The guy got the zoning to agree to the change and he prepared the property for rental to residential occupants.
NYC does not now nor has it ever allowed folks to just throw up what they wanted to throw up ~ and I mean EVER. When they built the Wall at Wall Street if you wanted to live North of the Wall they wouldn't come to help you when the Indians attacked. So everybody lived South of the Wall.
So, that's New York City. They can and do deny services, and zoning, unless you agree to certain stipulations ~ one is that you make your building safe ~ they don't want them simply falling over like urban ruins in an ancient abandoned city. That damages your neighbor's property rights for one thing, and it might kill someone. Better a little safety now than a dead guy's heirs calling for your head eh! I think even Walter would end up on my side in any debate about building codes ~ as would virtually all building owners.
Ever been to New York City? When you go think about how the owner of one of those buildings would feel if the city let the guy next door mismanage his building and it fell down into your building.
Now, out in East Central Oklahoma, there's plenty of land so you could put these things up all over the place a half mile apart and nobody would care, probably not even if one of them fell over. As long as it didn't scare the livestock that'd be OK.
As much as some people would like, you can't have a large city like New York City that runs in a state of nature. You must have the rule of law ~ and some rather precise zoning and land use controls. They already went through those days and had horse manure piled up in the streets such that wagons were difficult to draw and people wore mufflers to avoid choking on the dust.
This guy agreed to do business in New York City according to their laws. He violated the law. He should not profit from that.