If there was a kit to build a free country, the three biggest pieces in the box would be the fundamental rights to life, liberty and property.
After the U.S. Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment and the concurrent Civil Rights Act of 1866 sought to secure these rights for the freed slaves by guaranteeing them to every person. Property rights were explained as the right “to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.”
These rights belong to individuals, not to communities, and not to activists seeking to remake society into the socialist hellhole they know it can be if they can just control three votes on the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
On June 25, the Board of Supervisors is set to consider a motion by Supervisor Hilda Solis to advance a “Community Opportunity to Purchase Act Program for Unincorporated Los Angeles County.”
Solis is proposing a “policy intervention” to prevent “potential displacement risks” from rising real estate values. The problem, as she sees it, is that the owners of apartment buildings can sell them to anyone they choose.
Her solution is TOPA and COPA, acronyms that stand for “Tenant Opportunity to Purchase” and “Community Opportunity to Purchase.”
Because tenants typically don’t have enough money to buy the apartment building in which they live, a “Community Opportunity to Purchase” program would use other people’s money to buy the building.
The “COPA Program operates alongside the TOPA Program by granting similar purchase rights to mission‑driven affordable housing organizations — such as community land trusts and nonprofit developers — who can acquire and preserve properties when tenants lack the resources to purchase directly,” the Solis motion states.
Whenever you hear about a “housing bond,” that’s the government borrowing money to give out grants and contracts to the type of entities that Solis is trying to empower with “purchase rights.” Local bonds are repaid, with interest, by placing charges on property tax bills for 20 to 40 years. State general obligation bonds are repaid from the state treasury, displacing other budget priorities that might have been funded if there wasn’t so much debt (plus interest) to repay first.
But even a flood of your tax dollars isn’t enough to make TOPA/COPA into a viable plan. That’s because property owners are free – there’s that word again – to sell their properties without first waiting for the “community” to go through a decision-making process to approve the purchase and funding.
A 2023 report by the county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, cited by Solis, says “the housing stock” in the unincorporated county area totals 293,000 housing “units,” of which 110,000 are renter-occupied. Single-family homes account for the majority, 59,800 tenant households. The next largest category, housing 31,500 tenant households, is “properties with more than five units.”
Tenant-occupied properties have owners (even when the owners are corporations owned by individuals) who have the right under the law to “lease, sell, hold, and convey” their property.
Solis wants to impede those rights. Her motion before the Board of Supervisors would direct various county departments to write an ordinance within 180 days to require “registration” of properties with five or more units, and mobile home parks, in order to “monitor sale transactions” and notify “qualified mission-driven purchasers.”
The ordinance would “develop procedures for implementation and enforcement” and “include budgetary and staffing considerations.”
The county CEO is directed to report back on potential “funding sources,” which generally means borrowed money or tax increases.
The purpose of the COPA program is to prevent the sale of apartment buildings until “community” buyers have a chance to work out their own offer, which could take many months. This process could easily hold properties hostage, with ransom payments offering the only escape.
Not only does this barrier to sales infringe fundamental property rights, it sends a message to housing investors to stay out of Los Angeles County and build beautiful new apartments someplace else, where they’re free to buy and sell property, while Los Angeles stagnates.
This is how government force drives down the quality of life, and how freedom enables prosperity.
We’ll see which one has three votes on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley