There's an old saying that your home is your castle. Which it
should be in a free country. But it isn't anymore in America,
thanks to a steady erosion of property rights through the years.
The following are three methods by which the government is
laying claim to your home. And this isn't considering the decline
in Fourth Amendment protections, which could be the subject of its
own essay.

First, there are property (real estate) taxes. Essentially,
even if you own your house free and clear with no mortgage, you
have to pay "rent" to the government or they can evict you and
take you home away from you. In an archaic legal absurdity,
these are considered taxes in rem, against a thing. Well,
inanimate objects don't pay taxes, people do. These are the
cruelest taxes of all, as they are levied without any consideration
of the owner's ability to pay. People like to complain about income taxes,
but at least if you don't have much income you don't have to pay much
in income taxes. The real estate taxes are devastating to senior citizens
and others on low or fixed income. So in essence, you don't own
your house, the government does.

Second, there are zoning, building, and housing codes and inspections.
These vary in severity with location. Some places forbid home
businesses and occupations, or permit them only with variance
applications and fees. Some essentially prohibit the homeowners from
doing repairs, other than minor painting, themselves. Some limit
the number and kind of pets you may own. Some cities
have housing inspectors who make their rounds and cite homeowners
for things like uncut grass, peeling paint, or "junk" cars. Or they encourage
people to snitch on their neighbors for violations. They may even have criminal
penalties for failing to make the required repairs. The government
rationale for these intrusions on your property rights is "keeping
up the housing stock." Probably so they can tax it more. Again, you
don't own your house, the government does.

Third is the lovely concept known as eminent domain, whereby the
government can take your property for public use, albeit with
supposedly just compensation. This is sanctioned in the Fifth Amendment
to the Constitution, but the express purpose there stated is for public use.
In the past this has meant for something actually used by the general
public, such as a road or a park. But the Supreme Court in the Kelo
case has obscenely warped "public use" into anything the government wants,
if it can be claimed that there is a public benefit.
In Kelo the government wanted to seize private property to sell to a
developer. The alleged public benefit was that the developed property
would yield more taxes than before. Yes, those dirty rotten taxes,
again.

After the Kelo case, a libertarian wag proposed to develop Supreme
Court Justice David Souter's New Hampshire estate into a hotel,
to be called, I believe, the Lost Rights Hotel. It would never happen,
of course, as eminent domain is rarely used against the rich and
powerful. Only against the poor and powerless. If you are
rich, your home may still be your castle. But if you are poor,
you don't own your house, the government does.

The Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves at the
perversion that this country has become.

If you want to fight property taxes (the apparent root of all these
evils), here is an online petition to abolish them:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/endpropertytaxes/