Housing Policy

The YIMBY-Libertarian Convergence

A eminent domain case out of Rhode Island shows how YIMBY regulatory reforms and libertarian constitutional law activism work in tandem.

Christian Britschgi | 8.4.2026 11:50 AM

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Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week's stories include: 

But first, our lead item on what a property owner's win in an eminent domain case out of Rhode Island tells us about the YIMBY-libertarian convergence on housing policy. 

What a Rhode Island Eminent Domain Case Says About the YIMBY-Libertarian Convergence

Last week, a federal district court judge in Rhode Island slapped down the town of Johnston's efforts to seize an empty parcel of land via eminent domain to stop an apartment project. 

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The ruling against the town and in favor of the Santoro family of developers, who owned the lot in question through their various companies, is welcome given just how egregious the town's behavior was. 

After Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena threatened to "use all the powers of government" to stop the Santoros' 254-unit project (while promising to "roll out the red carpet" for single-family development on the site), the town created its own bespoke eminent domain process to effectively take the property in the dead of night without any prior notice given to the owners. 

You can read the whole ruling here, as well as Reason's past coverage of the case here, here, and here.

What's especially interesting about the case for our purposes is that it serves as yet another example of the convergence between libertarian legal activism and YIMBY ("yes in my backyard") regulatory reform. 

The Santoro family was represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation. 

Libertarian-leaning public-interest law firms like the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Institute for Justice have long litigated takings cases on behalf of property owners. Their legal activism has helped establish limits to governments' powers to take property by eminent domain or to demand it during the permitting process. 

Where property rights litigation has been less successful is in creating new limits on the assumed ability of governments to pass whatever zoning laws they please. 

Since the Supreme Court's infamous 1926 decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty, state and federal courts have generally put few constitutional limits on governments' power to impose whatever use and density restrictions they please.

Where legal activism against zoning has stalled, however, political activism has been increasingly successful. 

For the past decade or so, the modern YIMBY movement has made tremendous headway in converting zoning laws from just a fact of life (and a go-to example of a boring issue in sitcoms) into a high-salience issue. 

YIMBY activism has encouraged a growing number of states and cities to pass laws liberalizing zoning regulations and/or allowing developers to bypass local land use restrictions when building housing. 

That's the case with Rhode Island, which passed reforms in 2023 allowing developers to build denser projects than what local zoning laws permit, provided they include some........

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