I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else on DU. I've been reading up on this for a while (a relative of mine helped fight a similar issue in her town, I did some web research for her.)
For the life of me, I can't see why this is considered in many quarters to be a "conservative" cause. (Most of the legal muscle involved here does seem to be coming from RW firms)
If there's anything "liberal" about developers and corrupt politicians conniving to confiscate middle class homes, I have to admit it escapes me.
Here's the best op-ed I've seen on it, from the Florida St Pete Times (not exactly a foaming RW rag)
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/02/20/Columns/Putting__home__back_i.shtmlPutting 'home' back in homeland
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published February 20, 2005
What could possibly unite such disparate elements as the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the AARP, together with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation and Cato Institute?
The home.
To liberals and conservatives alike, the home is a potent symbol of American freedom and well-being. Having a home is the consummate American dream, representing security and accomplishment. It is an ideal that crosses the ideological spectrum. And the specter of the government's confiscating a home to give it to private developers to generate a more lucrative tax base is more than anathema, it's a violation of the essential promise of this nation to its people.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will determine whether private ownership has any meaning left or whether we really live in a command economy, like the old Soviet Union, where government can expropriate property whenever it is profitable to do so.
In Kelo vs. City of New London, the court will decide the fate of Susette Kelo's home and those of her neighbors in the Fort Trumbull area of New London, Conn.
Kelo's Victorian-era home with a water view has been lovingly restored, according to her lawyers. But she is about to lose it to the New London Development Corp., a private entity that has been delegated the power of condemnation by the city. The NLDC wants Kelo's home, along with 14 others, in order to put together a 90-acre parcel for new development, including office space, a waterfront hotel and conference center and other uses. The city claims it can do this because economic redevelopment will benefit the public by bringing more tax revenue and jobs to the city. The homeowners say that they have invested their lives and treasure in their homes and are not interested in moving and shouldn't be forced to.
It has been more than 50 years since the high court considered and approved of the use of eminent domain involving private development. Eminent domain is the government's power to confiscate property in exchange for compensation. The Fifth Amendment allows the government to do this for a "public use," and eminent domain has traditionally been used to acquire land for roads, schools and other public buildings. But since the 1950s, its use has been expanded to include slum removal and other redevelopment aims.
Maybe it is constitutionally acceptable for governments to take over abandoned and unsafe buildings in a dying neighborhood for revitalization. But with more communities reaching density capacities and new land for building more and more scarce, the abusive use of condemnation is becoming a national scandal. According to a study by the Washington-based Institute for Justice - a leader in battling this scourge and the attorneys in the Kelo case - there were more than 10,000 filed or threatened condemnations in 41 states between 1998 and 2002, where the property to be taken was slated to go to another private entity.
Big developers are bypassing the marketplace, using the power of government to gain control over large parcels of undervalued land. This may enrich the local government tax base by clearing away low- and moderate-income residents to make room for the more affluent or deep-pocket commercial ventures, but it shatters the core understanding of what constitutes private property.
That's why 25 friend-of-the-court briefs are filed on behalf of Kelo and her neighbors, from liberal civil rights organizations to fiercely conservative groups and everything in between.
The brief by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty worries about the prospect that tax-exempt religious institutions can be moved aside by local governments any time there is a tax-generating enterprise that wants to move in.
The NAACP notes in its brief how redevelopment has historically been targeted at minority communities, so much so that urban renewal "was often referred to as "Negro removal."'
And the brief filed by author and legendary urban sociologist Jane Jacobs bemoans the consequent destruction of community that comes with "economic redevelopment":
"(P)eople who get marked with the planners' hex signs are pushed about, expropriated, and uprooted much as if they were the subjects of a conquering power," she writes. "Whole communities are torn apart and sown to the winds with a reaping of cynicism, resentment and despair that must be seen to be believed."
Little in life is as devastating as losing a home you love or a business you have built because the government thinks another private owner will do better things with the land. The court has an opportunity to end this spreading pox. The left and right wings of the court should come together and do so.
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