At the Takoma Park Street Festival in Montgomery County, Maryland, held on a rainy Sunday, several attendees told Fox News Digital they would be open to the government seizing private property, including their own homes, if it served a broader public purpose.
Takoma Park, a Maryland suburb just outside Washington, D.C., is known for its strong liberal lean, with homes and storefronts displaying pride flags and Black Lives Matter signage.
Maryland resident Matt Volk said he would support the government taking his home “broadly,” adding, “It’s highly situational, but I definitely think that there’s a lot of privately owned land and property that would be better put to use for public use, for resources and housing and things like that for people who are in need of things like that.”
Another attendee, Karen Irwin, who wore a t-shirt reading “Auntifa: Making White men uncomfortable since 1975,” said she would support such a seizure if it were decided democratically.
“I mean, if we were all doing it, I’d be so game,” Irwin said. “Do you know what I mean? And who’s coming to me? Is this a decision I’m making through democratic means? Then yes, yes, I would be so game. If I voted for it, sure.”
Irwin raised a further question about the scope of any such policy: “You want to be able to keep your property. From what time are we talking? From what in the history of this country? Is it just right now, from right now moving forward, whatever it is you have? Or, you know, 100 years ago, when someone else had it. But the government might have taken it away for whatever reason.”
A third attendee, Jaw Blake, said he would at least weigh the idea. “I don’t know that I would necessarily love it, but I mean, if it was something that was beneficial I’d at least consider it,” he said. “Nobody wants what they have to be taken away from them, but there is something we said about like you can set up things so that they’re available for everybody.”
Not everyone agreed
Other festival-goers pushed back on the idea. Jenny Sniderman said she would not want to give up her private property to the government unless she were compensated. “Of course I don’t want to give up my private property,” she said. “Are they going to reimburse me fairly? That would be helpful in making my choice.”
Steve Ney said he opposed home seizure but supported rent stabilization policies like the one recently enacted in New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “I think the idea of rent stabilization, for example, is an excellent idea where you limit the rate of increase in rent in order to help people stay in their homes,” he said.
New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 in July to freeze rent increases on one- and two-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments, a policy that has drawn legal challenges and criticism from property owners. Real Estate Board of New York President James Whelan said in August that “the mayor’s report focuses on symptoms, not causes. New Yorkers are paying record-high rents because there is not enough housing, and many of the reported conditions are concentrated in heavily rent-stabilized buildings that are facing significant operational and financial challenges.”
Historian Nina Gilden Seavy, also at the festival, rejected the premise outright. “I think that’s a ridiculous idea. I mean, that’s, it’s a fool’s errand,” she said. “The idea that somehow we’re gonna be better off if the government is in charge of allocating all resources that sounds not in any way desirable.”
A broader trend
The informal street-fair interviews come as polling suggests growing openness to socialism among younger and more liberal Americans. A Fox News poll from March found that 38% of respondents said it was a good idea to move away from capitalism and toward socialism. Among very liberal voters, 66% favored such a shift, as did 66% of Democrats under 45. More than half of all Democrats (55%), Black voters (55%) and adults under 30 (53%) also said they favored moving away from capitalism. Still, only 51% of all respondents said capitalism is working well, with 49% saying it is not.
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