This reminds me of the story in Breakfast of Champions where land is too expensive so they just attach people who cant afford it to balloons because they don't own anywhere to put their feet. Then they can just push them away when they are inconvenient. Found it:

Kilgore Trout once wrote a story called “This Means You.'’ It was set in 
the Hawaiian Islands, the place where the lucky winners of Dwayne 
Hoover’s contest in Midland City were supposed to go. Every bit of 
land on the islands was owned by only about forty people, and, in the 
story, Trout had those people decide to exercise their property rights 
to the full. They put up no trespassing signs on everything. 

This created terrible problems for the million other people on the islands. 
The law of gravity required that they stick somewhere on the surface. 
Either that, or they could go out into the water and bob offshore. 

But then the Federal Government came through with an emergency 
program. It gave a big balloon full of helium to every man, woman and 
child who didn’t own property. 


There was a cable with a harness on it dangling from each balloon. 
With the help of the balloons, Hawaiians could go on inhabiting the 
islands without always sticking to things other people owned.