Eminent Domain Round Up
People are starting to notice and get a little mad:
An opinion piece reporting that ED caters to developers:
Mayor Adam Schneider claims Long Branch citizens just don’t understand the need to use eminent domain to take property. Unfortunately, we understand all too well. No property is safe from being stolen if a developer comes up with a plan for high-end condos and better ratables. Most homes in the affected area were well kept and family owned. Only a few rentals could be called blighted.
More residents are taking up the fight:
According to the Bobrows, the new coalition will have two goals, “to stop eminent domain abuse and to obtain equitable compensation for property if taken.”
The coalition is open to all interested parties, including individuals who do not live in the Beachfront South area or any redevelopment zone he added.
“If other people want to join who think eminent domain abuse is wrong, they can come too,” he said.
And what would you expect from a town called Liberty:
Under this nation’s original property law, the Fifth Amendment, “A man’s home is his castle” carried the weight of Scripture, but present laws suggest, “A person’s home is his government’s, which can buy and sell that home to anyone for a profit.”
The situation is an injustice perpetrated upon Northlanders and other people nationwide by the government’s unrestrained, oppressive use of eminent domain.
People who used to live around Kansas City International Airport learned that fact the hard way.
March 11th, 2005 at 9:33 am
It’s very interesting. On this issue pretty much all of the newspaper editorial opinion seems to be overwhelmingly in favor of Kelo. The Left (anti-big corporation) and Right (individual property rights) both want the same result, if for different reasons.
Wonder if Justice Kennedy will listen to the “national consensus.”
March 11th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
I would actually say the Left (well, let’s say Liberals) and Right want it for the same reason with a slightly different spin – individual empowerment.
Let’s dismiss the social engineering types on both sides and get down to what everyone knows – democratic “free market” societies rely on property rights as a fundamental building block.
Both sides believe the ability to buy and sell property is an essential element if you plan to improve your material standard of living and that of your children. They may differ on what constitutes an infringement of that right, but no one can argue that taking one’s home is not an infringement. Liberals still remember how the black middle class was literally wiped out in some areas because of Urban Renewal.
One of the most annoying things that happens in the hot urban markets is for the developers to co-opt the support of some affordable housing activist group with NON-BINDING promises, have a big PR event where they talk about innovation and fighting for working families, then using this as a club to beat the “yuppies” to death with if they oppose their homes being taken. They try the guilt trip thing. It used to work politically, but now it is backfiring.
Up here in Brooklyn, a developer is poised to get nearly a billion dollars worth of real-estate for nothing. Fortunately, some brave local politicians that represent the district have decided to take it to the matresses with Mayor Bloomberg (and Pataki, who is the whore of whores when it comes to boondoggles). Most of these politicians are African American representing mostly white folks who are threatened by the ED. They proposed an alternate plan based on public input which was facilitated by a young architect who also happened to be black. The interesting dynamic is watching them explain to the affordable housing folks why they are doing it. At first the housing advocates are skeptical, but they are being won over. They can be convinced that they are patsies, and that even if they weren’t, ED is not inherently good for the working poor trying to get a leg up.
I hope I have good news to report on this someday, but so far, the battle for Brooklyn (like the one early in the Revolutionary War)doesn’t look good.
Fight the good fight.