Eminent Domain – How It Could Affect You
What is eminent domain? It is the right by which a sovereign government, or a person or agency acting under its authority, may acquire private property for public or semi-public use upon payment of reasonable compensation and without consent of the owner. To get a standing of eminent domain on your property the powers that be are required to bring a court action against the property in a process called condemnation in which the court determines if the use is for the betterment of the community and then decides the price of compensation to be paid to the owner. This price can be well below current market value depending on the area of the country and which group of people are attempting to seize control of said property. This property can be seized to build a road, a school, a courthouse, or in some cases private developers representing the government have used it to build more expensive homes and offices that will pay more in property taxes than the buildings that they will be replacing.
In July of 2004, CBS dedicated a portion of its newscast to the issue of whether eminent domain was being abused with the question being posed as to if the seizure of property was always in the public’s best interest. Correspondent Mike Wallace reported on incidents where people who don’t want to sell their homes at any price — just to see them end up in the hands of another private owner — are fighting back. One example that Wallace used was of a family who had lived in a home for 38 years only to find themselves being forced out to make way for more expensive condominiums. In this particular case the family, believing that the government was morally wrong, refused to vacate their home. However, they are in for quite a fight as the town’s mayor plans on tearing down not just their home but 55 others around it along with four apartment buildings and more than a dozen businesses so that private developers can build high-priced condos and a high-end shopping mall. The mayor told 60 Minutes that the project was needed to prop up the city’s shrinking tax base so that city services can be maintained.
However, to accomplish this the mayor must use the condemnation process and should have been forced to prove that the area was blighted but in this instance that was not the case. The mayor nonetheless argues that the term blighted is a statutory word that has nothing to do with the condition of your property but rather is a question to whether or not area can be used for a higher and better use. The mayor’s feeling is that the term should be applied to describe if the structures in the area generally meet today’s standards not if a home is painted. In this situation the standard was set that the homes in the area must have a minimum of three bedrooms, two baths, an attached two-car garage and central air. In this particular community that standard was almost impossible to meet since the community is over 100 years old.
Attorneys Dana Berliner and Scott Bullock, on behalf of the Institute for Justice, filed suit on behalf of the couple against the city claiming that taking private property in this way is unconstitutional. During testimony Berliner claimed that “this is a nationwide epidemic” and claims to have “more than 10,000 instances on record in which government has taken property away from one person only to give it to another person in just the last five years. Fortunately for the couple they won their case and forced the city to remove the blighted label from their property. Berliner then went on to add that while “everyone knows that property can be taken for a road, nobody thinks that property can be taken to give it to their neighbor or the large business down the street for their economic benefit.”
Sadly, this isn’t just happening in small towns but also in New York City. Just a few blocks from Times Square, the state forced a man to give up a corner that his family had owned for over 100 years so the New York Times could build its new headquarters on the property. When challenged in court regarding the seizure of this property, New York State’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the big corporate entity stating that the new headquarters would eliminate blight and in the long run benefit the public.
Unfortunately, the very threat of eminent domain changes people’s lives. People who were smart enough to invest in prime real estate before it became prime are being forced out to make way for businesses and entrepreneurs with more money to feed the government underbelly. If you are fed up with government dictating to you, especially in areas such as eminent domain, it is time to take charge and start the legal process to get these issues on the next voting ballot in your area. Successfully, putting an end to corporate and government corruption is up to you and remember in this instance it could be your very home or business that is threatened by these policies.
[tags]eminent domain, legal process, government corruption, corporation, condemnation, blighted property, Dana Berliner, Institute for Justice, Scott Bullock, Mike Wallace, CBS, public property, private property[/tags]
