HOLLAND — Several weeks after a city zoning officer shut down his hot dog business, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski and his parents are homeless.

The family was hoping Nathan’s hot dog cart could help them through a difficult time.  Nathan’s mother, Lynette Johnson, suffers from epilepsy and his stepfather, Doug Johnson, has multiple sclerosis. Their illnesses have restricted them from finding permanent, full-time work.

The family receives about $1,300 a month in disability payments, Medicaid and food assistance. The three are having a hard time staying together. MLive confirms what the Mackinac Center learned Thursday — Nathan and his mother are staying at the Holland Rescue Mission.

"Nate and I are now in a shelter," Lynette Johnson said. "Doug can't stay with us because he takes prescription narcotics to deal with his pain and the shelter does not allow him with those kinds of drugs."

She said the situation has been stressful on the family. Lynette is afraid to be away from her husband in case she has a seizure. 

Nathan wanted to help out his family by selling hot dogs from a cart he bought with money he saved. He worked out an arrangement with the owner of a local sporting goods store to sell hot dogs in the parking lot. The owner of the store thought it would be a great way to attract customers and even offered Nathan a sales commission if he got people to rent his motorized bicycles.

The city of Holland, however, shut down the business 10 minutes after it opened, informing Nathan it was in the city’s commercial district where food carts not connected to downtown brick-and-mortar restaurants are prohibited. The Mackinac Center’s coverage of the issue has drawn national attention.

Last week, Nathan and his family made an appeal to the Holland City Council. Mayor Kurt Dykstra defended the city’s ordinance, saying it was to protect downtown restaurant owners, who asked that the "success of the downtown district not be infringed upon by those who don't share in the costs of maintaining the attractiveness of that space."

A video of the mayor’s comments and the latest on the family's plight can be found here.

(Editor's note: Since the posting of this video, Doug Johnson, stepfather of Nathan Duszynski, has been arrested.)

Excerpt from a Charles Murray essay, “Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem”:

The U.S. was created to foster human flourishing. The means to that end was the exercise of liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Capitalism is the economic expression of liberty. The pursuit of happiness, with happiness defined in the classic sense of justified and lasting satisfaction with life as a whole, depends on economic liberty every bit as much as it depends on other kinds of freedom.

. . . What government can do to help is establish the rule of law so that informed and voluntary trades can take place. More formally, government can vigorously enforce laws against the use of force, fraud and criminal collusion, and use tort law to hold people liable for harm they cause others.

Everything else the government does inherently restricts economic freedom to act in pursuit of earned success. . . Every intervention that erects barriers to starting a business, makes it expensive to hire or fire employees, restricts entry into vocations, prescribes work conditions and facilities, or confiscates profits interferes with economic liberty and usually makes it more difficult for both employers and employees to earn success.

. . . .(P)eople with a wide range of political views can acknowledge that what has happened incrementally over the past half-century has led to a labyrinthine regulatory system, irrational liability law and a corrupt tax code.

Michigan legislators have done their share. According to MichiganVotes.org:

513 bills introduced by Michigan legislators since 2001 to impose, expand or revise occupational licensure mandates that prohibit earning a living in a trade without permission from the government.

649 bills introduced by Michigan legislators since 2001 to impose, expand or revise "consumer protection" regulations on private enterprises.

213 bills introduced by Michigan legislators since 2001 to expand or revise environmental regulations, in which the word "impose" is contained in the MichiganVotes.org description of the bill. (A total of 1,191 bills have been introduced in the site's "environment" category.)

717 bills introduced by Michigan legislators since 2001 to impose, expand or revise business regulations, where the MichiganVotes.org description contains the word "require."

950 bills introduced by Michigan legislators since 2001 in the "economic development" category, almost all of which expand crony capitalism by doling out discriminatory tax breaks, subsidies and corporate welfare to particular business owners, developers or politically favored industries.

27,935 new laws proposed by Michigan legislators since 2001.

5,119 new laws actually enacted by Michigan legislators since 2001.

Not every one of these bills has added to "a labyrinthine regulatory system, irrational liability law and a corrupt tax code." A tiny minority actually tried to lessen these things. But by far the vast majority would have or did make them worse, regardless of the good intentions behind almost every one of them.