Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3016

Printed pamphlet very slightly amended in pencil by Alvin Lowi. For the printed version, see Originals file.

No date

 

 

 

NOTES ON THE

ORGANIZATION OF REAL ESTATE

 

To Create Community Values and Revenues

by the Production and Distribution of

COMMUNITY SERVICES

through

Responsible Proprietary Administration

 

 

 

 

 

This is not a plan or program to be enforced or imposed, but a forecast of the method of free enterprise whereby society will continue to evolve. The organization of real estate as here outlined opens a whole new field of corporate enterprise with profits vast and in proportion to the investments held.

 

For comprehensive analysis of the social organization, and extension of the forecast more in detail, see the present writer’s volume under the title, Citadel, Market and Altar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above title contemplates the formation of a city-wide syndicate or corporation to acquire, under due appraisal, diverse titles and to hold under consolidated ownership, or in trust, the basic realty — the sites and their resources, and therewith all the community services and advantage (the public capital and its use) appurtenant to them.

 

     A group of properties, preferably though not necessarily contiguous, but having the same common services, could be pooled by like-minded owners in exchange for equivalent shares in the new organization. Thereafter, successive properties, whether contiguous or not, could be acquired under agreed appraisements either by exchange for an equal equity in the organization or purchased out of proceeds from equities already sold.

 

     The properties so united under competent management, with all the common services and amenities enjoyed by them, would thus become the working capital of the syndicate or corporation, no longer as separate titles but represented by equivalent participating and easily negotiable equities or shares. The owners of these equities would receive income no longer each from his separate property but according to his proportionate ownership in the whole.

 

     Such and organization would have no pecuniary or other interest but to protect and increase the desirability of the whole city — its attractiveness in all respects — for the conduct of business or other use or occupancy of its sites. Especially would it profit from its encouragement of the business of erecting and operating useful and beautiful buildings for the housing of the inhabitants, of their business enterprises and of their free cultural institutions and affairs. By looking primarily to the needs, the protection and prosperity of its public — to the common freedom and the common facilities of conducting business and employment — attending last of all to its own supposedly separate and exclusive interests, such an organization, while advancing thereby its own values and income, would at the same time gain and command the highest public confidence and respect. It would supply widely general services such as supervising the public budget and other protection against political profligacy or extravagance and also against such short-sighted economizings as would disadvantage business in general and thereby halt the growth of location values and incomes.

 

     The money-making business of this organization of the basic realty would thus be two-fold: First, to expose and prevent such public practices, whether authorized or corrupt, as impair the profits of investment and employment in business and thereby retard all employment and production, and, second, to maintain such public facilities and support such public policies as are favorable to the growth of private enterprise and thereby to the increase of all real-estate values.

 

     In contrast to the physical rehabilitation of particular areas, conduct of these broad administrative services in behalf of realty values in general would not require the total organization of ground title holders. Even a substantial portion or preponderant value of the basic realty so united would be sufficient to influence heavily and determine the trend of municipal administration. Nor would there be any need for physical contiguity in order to effect this administrative rehabilitation.

 

     It is true that the reliefs and other benefits, falling first upon the occupiers and users of sites in general, would increase the value and income not alone of the administratively organized and united properties. Those not so included also would be benefited. But even under the best of general administration, those owners who held out against the general organization would find their properties less protected and in many respects less benefited, hence, as compared to the united properties, less profitable to them. Such hold-out owners therefore would have strong motivation to come into and enjoy the full benefits of the general administration.

 

     All business corporations are proprietary.[1] In proportion as they serve their clientele and do not injure them, they are profitable to their owners through benefiting the particular public whom they serve.

 

     All that is necessary in order to convert a local political corporation into a proprietary corporation is that the actual owners of the community unite their separate properties and take equivalent undivided interests in proportion to the values of their respective contributions. Such corporations will prosper upon the values and profits they create. Their securities will eventually become so universally desired and so widely held that the democratic voting ideal[2] will be realized in the administration of community capital and conduct of community affairs.

 

     As living things are drawn to cooperate with their own, so productive properties of similar kind tend to combine. Individual and divided ownerships happily become transformed into voting share interests — into undivided ownerships — in large united properties and organizations. Thus society evolves.