Tag: private property

B.C. Supreme Court approves Indigenous ownership of Haida Gwaii

The B.C. Supreme Court has officially recognized the Haida Nation’s aboriginal title to the Haida Gwaii islands, excluding public infrastructure and private land, reported the Epoch Times. This decision affirmed an April 2024 agreement between the Haida Nation, B.C., and Canada.

On April 14, 2024, the Haida Nation and B.C. signed the “Rising Tide” Haida Title Lands Agreement, supported by a 95% vote from Haida Gwaii residents on April 6.

The agreement was unanimously backed by all present in the B.C. legislature on April 29, received royal assent on May 16, and was supported by the federal government.

“Today Haida ancestors are dancing in celebration that the discrimination they endured in our colonial past is now behind us,” Haida Nation wrote in celebration.

“… the governments of the Haida Nation, Canada and British Columbia are forging a new path where we can foster the jurisdictional space for Haida laws to grow and deepen, without conflict, and based on respect.” 

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Hamilton man ordered to take down security cameras on home due to city by-law

On Monday’s live stream, Sheila Gunn Reid and Tamara Ugolini discussed a Hamilton, Ont. man being ordered by the city to take down the security cameras on his home in order to comply with a by-law.

Dan Myles, who has 10 security cameras on his home, was recently ordered by the city to remove the cameras over a by-law that restricts people from having cameras that view beyond the perimeters of their property.

He claims the cameras have actually been valuable assets for law enforcement over the years. “I’ve actually participated in evidence sharing of three homicides on these cameras, over 40 break and enters, multiple home invasions, car break and enters, assaults, you name it,” he said, as reported by Global News.

Sheila condemned the City of Hamilton for enforcing the by-law order on Myles to remove the security cameras from the outside of his home.

“He put some serious investment in this, and they’re making him pull it down. Why? Because he’s showing everybody the criminality of the neighbourhood,” she said.

“That’s the real problem. He’s the criminal, not the real criminals. Heaven forbid we see the license plate of the people who pull up to rob your house because he recorded a little off his driveway,” Sheila continued.

Myles has reportedly appealed the order and was told he could possibly be given an exemption if he provides a number of items including signed permission from neighbouring homeowners, police reports that support a need for the cameras, and a letter of support from his landlord.

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Miami Beach’s Silent Crisis: How Greed, Corruption, And Indifference Are Destroying Lives Behind Closed Doors

In Miami Beach, we have a problem most residents never see until it is too late. What is happening to Robert Kraft, known to many as Raven, is not just one man’s story. It is a warning to every homeowner and resident in this city.

Raven has run eight miles every single day along Ocean Drive for nearly fifty years. His daily run has become part of the soul of Miami Beach. Now, after decades of calling this city home, he faces foreclosure. Not because he refused to pay. Not because of financial irresponsibility. But because bad actors inside a broken system have found ways to exploit local enforcement gaps, city oversight failures, and association loopholes for personal profit.

It started as a legitimate repair issue. Structural problems led to court intervention. A Special Master, David Swilley, was appointed to oversee the building at 326 Ocean Drive. That is where the real abuse began. Instead of protecting residents, Swilley and his associates took complete control of the building’s finances, levied inflated assessments, misapplied payments, and took out high-interest loans without owner approval. Many of those loans appear to be linked to entities associated directly with Swilley.

There has been no functioning board. Residents have no vote. Notices are delivered late or not at all. Accounting records are opaque. Personal information was improperly exposed. Violations of the Florida Condominium Act and consumer protection laws are piling up. While residents are being financially squeezed and forced out, those in control continue collecting legal fees, management fees, and pocketing the proceeds of a manufactured financial crisis.

This is not mismanagement. This is exploitation.

The most outrageous part is not just the conduct of those running this building. It is the silence and failure of the city that allowed this to happen. Miami Beach’s local officials have known for years how these games work. They know certain properties get selective code enforcement. They know who receives special treatment with permits and inspections. They know when court-appointed agents abuse their authority, hide behind court orders, and strip residents of their homes one lien at a time. They know, and they do nothing. Why? Because too many of them are controlled by the same consultants and insiders who thrive off this system.

The city has building officials, inspectors, and lawyers on staff who could have flagged this behavior years ago. But instead, they looked the other way while residents like Raven were left to fend for themselves.

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Australian ‘Experts’ Propose Tax On Spare Bedrooms To Ease Housing Shortage

In a brainstorm that has leftist central planners around the world salivating, an Australian market analytics firm has proposed that the country start imposing a tax on spare bedrooms. The aim: To ease the country’s housing shortage by incentivizing those who have more housing than they “need” to sell and downsize. 

Cotality Australia notes that 61% of the country’s households comprise just one or two people, yet the housing stock is dominated by three- and four-bedroom homes. Cotality says that, to “fix” this discrepancy, “governments could make it more expensive to have more housing than you need, and cheaper to live in smaller housing.” 

“It’s perfectly acceptable and desirable for people to have spare bedrooms, [but] you could ask them to pay for it through land tax,” Cotality Australia head of research Eliza Owen told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Or you could incentivize them to move on through the abolition of stamp duty or some combination of both.” The stamp duty is an Australian tax on property transfers that’s paid by buyers. Depending on factors that include location and purpose — for example, whether the buyer is going to live in the home or use it as an investment — it usually falls between 3 and 5% of the property’s value.  

Voices on the Australian right are firing back, among them Alexandra Marshall at The Spectator: 

“In the interests of ‘saving the economy’…we’ve witnessed the start of open season on private assets as part of the intellectual discussion to provide equity. The government didn’t just run out of other people’s money, it’s run out of other people’s houses.

It’s not the fault of Australians that the government started importing millions of foreigners into the country or that the government turns a blind eye when millions more refuse to leave after their visa has expired…How wildly unfair and sinister it is to turn around to Australians and say, I see you have an extra bedroom in that house you worked your arse off to pay for… Move or we’ll tax you.” 

Meanwhile, Australian redistributionists are busy cooking up other means of extracting wealth from homeowners. In a new paper, university professors Peter Siminski and Roger Wilkins assail Australia’s capital gains tax exemption for owner-occupied housing, by which the government foregoes the coercive collection of $50 billion a year. They also urge the imposition of a tax on “imputed rental income” — the value of owning a home and not having to pay rent. In a manifestly Marxist sentence, the academics complain that favorable treatment of owner-occupied housing is “a major driver of inequality, undermining the redistributive role of government.“

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Las Vegas church outrages neighbors as congregation parks SIX HUNDRED cars on lawns and driveways

Las Vegas residents were left outraged as congregants at an Ethiopian orthodox church continue to illegally park their vehicles on lawns and driveways.

Neighbors of the Hamere Noah Kidane Mihret and Saint Michael Ethiopian Church told KLAS they have repeatedly reached out to Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft and used the Fixit app as they were instructed, but nothing has changed in years.

‘We document that and we provide that proof and we have found that there’s no follow up,’ said Daria Wu, who gathered her fellow neighbors to discuss the issues they have faced during the services at the church.

These include a spike in speeding cars, vehicles running the stop signs and illegally parked cars.

‘It’s not great to sometimes have your driveway blocked by someone else’s car,’ Wu noted, as a recent morning ceremony brought more than 600 vehicles, most of which were parked illegally in front of county ‘no parking’ signs.

The swath of illegally-parked vehicles extended more than a mile, completely blocking some off some roads. 

Church members have claimed the hundreds of illegally parked vehicles only come once a year, though residents say it is much more frequently that they are dealing with the issue.

A congregant also reportedly admitted that the parking jobs were illegal according to the signs, but was not an issue because the county has not enforced ‘no parking’ rules.

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The Number of Housing Units Under Construction Continues to Crash

What’s the impact on rent?

Decline from Post-Covid Peak

  • Total Units: 20.7 percent
  • Single-Family: 25.2 percent
  • Multi-Family: 27.3 percent

The decline puts the number of single-family units under construction near the middle of a very wide range of 236,000 on the low end and 990,000 on the high end.

However, the number of multi-family units under construction is still enormous historically speaking.

Impact on Rent

For three years, the consensus opinion (not mine) was that rent prices would collapse.

That didn’t happen although the rate of increase in the price of rent has slowed dramatically.

However, Trump sealing off the Southern border from immigration, could soon start having a positive impact (lower rents) if builders started too much immigration-based construction.

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These Are America’s 25 Largest Private Landowners

The U.S. is known for its massive public national parks, but a handful of families and entrepreneurs also own tracts of land that would dwarf some states.

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks America’s 25 largest private landowners in 2025 and shows just how concentrated ownership has become.

The data for this visualization comes from The Land Report, which annually tracks the nation’s biggest deed holders. Its 2025 investigations reveals a timber-heavy top tier, diversified ranching empires in the middle, and a sprinkling of tech titans and investors rounding out the list.

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California’s Fraudulent “Disaster Recovery” Is A Land Grab

Remember Gavin Newsom’s first visit to the sites of devastating fires last January in Los Angeles, when he vowed to streamline California’s paralytic regulations so people could quickly rebuild their homes?

In that interview, while undulating his shoulders in a weird shimmy that will undoubtedly come back to haunt him as he ramps up his presidential campaigning, Newsom also promised to “prevent opportunistic investors from exploiting vulnerable residents by offering below-market prices.”

It’s hard to say which promise has been more thoroughly violated. As celebrity author Adam Carolla posted on 7/14, there is virtually no work going on along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, where hundreds of homes burned down to the sand.

This is typical.

The Palisades Fire, with a burn area that included Malibu, destroyed over 6,000 homes. So far, 161 permits have been issued by the City of Los Angeles. The community of Altadena, which was consumed by the Eaton Fire, lost over 9,000 homes. So far, 84 rebuilding permits have been issued.

Instead of streamlining the process to get permits to rebuild, if anything, the city has made it harder. In a July 14 interview with the local ABC affiliate, one dispossessed homeowner claimed the city is adding new requirements and deadlines, saying, “They’re now requiring you to submit an itemized list with pricing, which is nearly impossible in a home that’s been owned for over 40, 50 years.”

But whether it’s California Governor Gavin Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the playbook is not designed to help people rebuild their homes and move back into the neighborhoods where their families have lived for generations. New regulations did not replace old regulations. They added as much as they removed, with the new ones being unfamiliar even to veteran builders. All of them, of course, came delivered with the rhetoric of streamlining, while in fact only adding complexity.

Newsom, a tool of corporatist special interests, and Bass, a socialist darling of public sector union bosses, were never playing a game intended to help anyone living in a “single-family detached home.” The new regulations, sold as a way to expedite permitting, were in fact a way to make rebuilding impossible for all but the wealthiest homeowners. And Newsom’s executive order that would “prevent opportunistic investors from exploiting vulnerable residents by offering below-market prices” was actually a move calculated to limit the options of homeowners while the special interests—including the government itself—lined up to purchase these properties.

This isn’t speculation. In late June, Los Angeles County’s “Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire-Safe Recovery” issued its “draft action plan” for “The Resilient and Sustainable Rebuilding of Los Angeles County.” This document is a textbook example of what corporate socialist elites have in store for those normal citizens who, to date, still maintain a modicum of financial independence.

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Watch Mamdani the Commie Say That He’s OK With the ‘Abolition of Private Property’

People on the left keep insisting that New York City Democrat nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani is not a communist, yet clip after clip of this guy talking reveals him to be an outspoken Marxist through and through.

This time, it’s a clip of him on some podcast saying that he is fine with the abolition of private property.

Note how he frames it. He wraps these comments in claims that he just cares so much about making sure that everyone has housing that he is open to doing away with private property. See? It’s just because he cares so much that he might have to take homes away from some people in order to make sure that other people have homes. It’s all about caring.

FOX News reports:

Zohran Mamdani’s past comments are once again coming back to haunt his New York City mayoral campaign, as a resurfaced video reveals the socialist candidate floated the “abolition of private property.”

“My platform is that every single person should have housing, and I think faced with these two options, the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right? For what?” Mamdani questioned in a resurfaced video that has been clipped and reposted across conservative social media.

“If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it, you know, just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now,” Mamdani said.

“People try and play like gotcha games about these kinds of things, and it’s like, look, I care more about whether somebody has a home,” he said.

The clip drew widespread condemnation from conservatives, including GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who told Fox News Digital, “He claims to be a socialist, whether it’s wanting to abolish private property or wanting to seize the means of production, these are communist ideas right out of the playbook of Karl Marx.”

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International Buyers Purchased $56 Billion Worth Of US Homes In 1 Year

Foreign buyers purchased $56 billion worth of existing homes in the United States between April 2024 and March 2025, up by 33.2 percent from the previous 12 months, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in a July 14 statement.

In terms of the number of properties, they bought 78,100 units, a 44 percent increase from the prior year. This was also the first annual increase since 2017. The average purchase price was $494,400, a “record high,” NAR said.

“International interest in buying U.S. real estate increased following the global economic recovery from several years of pandemic-related disruptions,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

“However, elevated home prices and interest rates continue to dampen overall potential sales activity and remain well below pre-pandemic levels.”

China was the top buyer nation of U.S. existing homes, making up 15 percent of all foreign purchases. Canada was a close second at 14 percent, followed by Mexico at 8 percent, India at 6 percent, and the United Kingdom at 4 percent.

The top housing market for international buyers was Florida, which accounted for 21 percent of all such deals. This was followed by California (15 percent), Texas (10 percent), New York (7 percent), and Arizona (5 percent).

“To some degree, due to stubbornly high mortgage rates, a greater share of international home buyers paid cash—47 percent compared to 28 percent among all buyers—and they were more likely to purchase homes priced in the upper end of the market,” Yun said.

“Foreign buyers are drawn to investing in American real estate, in part, by our country’s strong protection of private property rights.”

Among all foreign purchases, 56 percent were made by foreigners who live in the United States as recent immigrants or who have visas allowing them to reside in the country.

Interest in U.S. home purchases by Canadians dropped this year amid trade tensions, according to a July 4 statement from real estate brokerage Redfin.

The number of Canadian users on the Redfin platform searching for homes in the United States decreased by 26.4 percent from a year earlier in May.

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