The privatization of America, part 2

This is the second part of my 2-part investigative report about the privatization of America's land - and my defiance of this trend.

In the first segment, I clued you in on the takeover of our land by schools, which themselves have become de facto private institutions. My second segment deals with the privatization of residential neighborhoods.

Notice how many newer residential subdivisions carry a private property sign. It brings us to ask if the roads in these neighborhoods actually are private.

If they're private, who owns them? Who would have the money to own all the roads and rights-of-way in a development? And do you know anyone who owns such conveyances?

If the roads in developments of such a large size are under private ownership, they'd have to be owned by someone with a lot of money, wouldn't you say? And with so many subdivisions with private property signs now, there'd have to be an awfully lot of people with lots and lots of money, right?

Except there aren't.

So I did a little digging.

I was so confident that the private property signs are bogus that last Wednesday I took the Peace Bike through an allegedly private neighborhood in northern Kentucky - without gaining anyone's permission first:



More clues that such areas are public? The same traffic laws apply in these developments that apply elsewhere. Traffic control devices such as signs are even the same. Near the end of that video, for instance, we see a stop sign that's identical to those on public highways. Sometimes you'll see a sign that uses, say, a nonstandard font or unusual wording - but such is also the case on roads that are indisputably public. This for example is a sign on an undeniably public road in my area:


Roads Scholars may note that neither the font nor the wording of that sign is standard for traffic signs, yet it appears on a public way.

As for the road in the video, I checked around after the fact. At least one reliable source lists the road in the video as public. One commercial street map marks it as private, but that's probably because the mapmakers field-checked and saw the sign.

All of my research points to the road being public. The private property sign seems to be a bluff. Thus, as a member of the public, I have a right to use the road. I believe I broke no laws. That street is not a driveway; it contains numerous residences.

Later I saw a much larger development with a similar sign. Only it didn't say private property; it said no trespassing. I've determined that this road is also likely public - so it would be impossible to trespass. Furthermore, how would owners of properties behind that area be able to access their own property if that road was private?

If the roads I saw Wednesday are private, someone's stockpiling a lot of land. This isn't a case of someone buying a few buildings and getting $300 a month from renting them out. This is a case of developers and other wealthy corporations practicing an oligopoly.

In Hawaii 40 years ago, 72 landowners owned 47% of all land in the state, and that was considered a high enough concentration that the state instituted land reforms to break up this oligopoly. (In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court permitted the state to institute these reforms.) I've been told that land in my area is concentrated to a much greater degree than 72 owners owning 47%.

Why shouldn't local governments order big corporations to divest their massive land holdings that artificially jack up prices? This wouldn't be for some phony "gentrification" or "redevelopment" goal. This would be for public use.

Public land is part of America's heritage. The country never could have been built without public land. With so much land concentration, people are priced out of what once belonged to all of us. Small private landowners are also being denied access to their homes and farms by being hamstrung by powerful developers.