It's in Oregon, I'd rather not say where exactly because I live in a very, very small community and I'm not sure if it's a widespread problem in the county or a localized issue in my neck of the woods.
A lot of this goes back to the 70's IIRC where Gov. Tom McCall passed a law to limit land use, which was great. Nobody wanted the sprawl you see on the East Coast or in parts of California, it's why Oregon still has a lot of nice areas with small farms and communities instead of shopping centers. Also of concern was, say, timber companies doing a harvest and then selling the land for a housing development or something -- this would also be terrible. Unfortunately, some more activist counties used this to deprive people of property rights which they bought into, I know there was a huge legal dispute over an issue along these lines just outside Portland in the 90's. We also had a ballot measure that was on tge books for about a year or two which would compensate land owners for lost value due to zoning changes, but that was thrown out pretty quickly.
I'm not exactly sure how we got such clear class divides in zoning and if it was intentional or not, but the effect is black and white.
Also of interest is how different counties handled permitting post-wildfires in 2020. There are many wildfire victims from my area who have been unable to rebuild because of permitting issues and what appears to be intentional obstruction by the county.
A side note, I don't know any displaced wildfire victims that received the hundreds of millions in federal aid sent our way. FEMA didn't approve any loans even though hundreds of structures were lost in a poor rural area -- but they were happy to provide water and WiFi, which is...something.
I hadn't heard of anything directly along those lines, which is why I asked for location. Figured if it was close enough to me, I might be able to learn more; I'm always interested in other viewpoints as well as gov't policies that I may be unaware of, but still subject to. I live in Oregon, so I'll have to do some more digging. Based on the wildfire comment, I could make some educated guesses. Certainly every time I drive down 22 from Salem over to Bend I'm struck by how many houses are still not being rebuilt. There are some, but there are vastly more RVs siting on big empty lots with remnants of what was once built there.
