Eminent Domain Expanded (or, all your property belong to KB Homes)

For light Friday reading, take a look at the Chicago Tribune article about yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, and learn how it's okay for local governments to take away your home and give the land to private developers in the name of "renewal."

Of course, the image used here isn't really accurate; SCOTUS wouldn't be your new landlord, but rather KB and Centex Homes and other assemblers of houses and commercial properties vastly inferior than those residents were trying to hold onto in this particular case.

Comments

[Timbo]

I don't understand. Why is it bad to have people get together and decide a few neighbors homes have to go for a greater good?

I guess if it was all pretense so big devleopers could put up ticky tack for hundreds of thousands of dollars, I would oppose it, too.

But we have a whole business district in Seattle-- the University District -- where the main small business store buildings stay vacant, run down with garbage left all over, and drug dealers on the sidewalk.

The city has put millions into sprucing things up, but the landlords are REITS, absentee, and don't give a shit.

I think it is a good idea to give them notice and start over.

We have 5 slum lords preying on poor people, and ruining old homes that are craftsman style. Should they just go along without any consequence to people or property? I think of a certain slum lord where the club of imminent domain would inspire a different attitude.

I am not dead set in favor of this ruling from the Supreme Court, but am sympathetic to community design and development and tools that make it happen.

Today

[JimC]

Of course it's primarly result will be to allow "big developers" to "put up ticky tack for hundreds of thousands," you will still have to buy politicans to kick people out of their homes and businesses and only certain people can afford that.

What you're missing here is that property rights are kind of important, kind of sorta one of the basic pillars of our whole Capitalist system. The abiltiy of the state to violate those rights should be extremely limited, regardless of what you think about some particular situation.

Now I suppose if you don't believe in Captalism you don't care, but then you're unwittingly giving those greedy corrupt rich people license to do as they please, including kicking you out of your home, in the hope that somewhere, sometime, someone you agree with will exercise that power to do something you like.

It's like free speech, believing in it means putting up things that you don't agree with, "for the greater good."

[jlt]

Go back and read the actual decision and take a look at the case this was based on. Of the homes originally slated for demolition, not a single one of them was empty or run down. More than half had been kept up quite well and significantly improved since 1925, the at least 3 of the residents had lived in those homes for more than 50 years (one was born there 82 years ago). Another had made $125,000 in improvements to the house in the hopes of not having it condemned, even though by all reports the house was in decent enough shape before she made the improvements.

The "fair market value" being offered these people by the single private developer who received the contract to renovate this district - without any oversight from the area's voters, and without any competition whatsoever - it less than 1/2 of what they could have gotten had they just sold their property before this area was slated for demolition and "renewal."

I certainly believe that there are very many situations when the needs of a group outweigh those of individuals. However, this is not that type of case, and this ruling is already being used in at least one other part of the country to simply make a big developer richer while making the rest of us poorer.

I think eminent domain, used fairly, is an excellent tool for removing blight and improving services and transportation routes. In this case, homes will be torn down for private businesses that in many cases will not even be locally owned - one more case of community dollars being used to make big corporations rich at their own expense.

[clew]

I think it's nonsense to say that the UDistrict in Seattle would be fixed by condemnation and rebuilding. In the first place, it's next to an enormous university; many, even most, university students don't have a lot of money. There has to be a region of cheap housing and cheap food for them. We could shove it off to Aurora and the far suburbs; that wouldn't do anyone any good.

In the second place, I've been walking there regularly for twenty years and I don't think it's any more drug-ridden than downtown. The dealers, like the clients, are wearing cheaper clothes, but you can get them either place.

In the third place, the probable buyer - if the UDist was sold - would be the U itself, and it seems principally to want to build dead-sidewalk office towers. Not an improvement.

I do think the slumlords should be shut down, but explicitly, for their negligence of human health and contractual duties; not underhandedly, with profit going to the connected.

"Why is it bad to have people get together and decide a few neighbors homes have to go for a greater good?" -- Ask the black neighborhoods in Nashville.

[David Sucher]

Clew is correct.

[jlt]

Thanks, Clew! The whole purpose - some would say the ONLY purpose - of Big Government is to protect the minority, whether from big business, big government, or an ethnic or economic majority.

Again, I do believe that there are legitimate uses of eminent domain laws, and certainly the removal of blight for the good of a community is one such use. But this entire decision is predicated on a situation where that was not the case at all, and I am very afraid that this will be yet more excuse to take more from those who have little and give it to those who have much.

[Gregg Guetschow]

What has been missed in comments with regard to this decision is the limited scope of its impact. Properties have been subject to taking for economic development purposes at least since the Poletown project in Detroit in 1981. While the Supreme Court extends the scope of the Fifth Amendment application of "public use" to include explicitly these kinds of projects, it does not substantively change what has been the de facto law of the land. It is not that private property owners are without recourse. Instead, that recourse is to the state legislative process and to the courts to assure that there is not abuse of the discretion permitted by the Supreme Court.

[David Sucher]

Gregg.
You might be interested to know that the same state court -- Michigan's - which wrote Poletown has now backed away from it -- and very explicitly I believe, characterizing Poletown as a mistake.

[jlt]

David - that's very true. 20 years later, the Michigan Supreme Court did indeed make a very abrupt about-face on Poletown and now characterizes it as "a grave abuse of civil authority." In fact, the decision explicitly makes it far more difficult for government entities to seize private property if the land will benefit private interests. More about this on Wednesday...

[Gregg Guetschow]

I am aware of the reveral by the Michigan Supreme Court. That is precisely the point of my earlier post. Many are spending their energies ranting about the U. S. Supreme Court decision. The fact remains that the way the Supreme Court treats its precedents makes it unlikely that this decision will be reversed any time soon. The action of the Michigan Supreme Court last year in County of Wayne v. Hathcock indicates that the potential for relief may lie elsewhere. One cannot be absolutely certain that the relief will lie with other state courts, however, particularly in light of the precedent set in Kelo. Citizens should turn their attention first to their state legislatures and then to state courts when questions of implementation arise.

[Lacey Symons]

States are working to curtail the effects this decision could have. Look on http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050719/ap_on_re_us/seizing_property for more info.