Property Rights Under Assault by Government-Corporate Partnerships

[XLFD]

Background:  Kelo Sets Bad Precedent 

Nine years after the Supreme Court’s Kelo v New London (2005) decision gutted the right of American property owners to resist eminent-domain seizures, the neighborhood at the center of the case remains a wasteland.

The case was named after its lead plaintiff, Susette Kelo, a nurse who had owned a stately pink house in the area, since demolished. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that the city of New London and a nonprofit quasi-public entity that the city had set up, then called the New London Development Corporation (NLDC), were entitled to seize, in a process known as eminent domain, the homes and businesses of Kelo and six other nearby property owners in the name of “economic development” that would generate “new jobs and increased revenue,” in the words of since-retired Justice John Paul Stevens, author of the majority opinion.

In a dissent opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote:  “Today the Court abandons [the Fifth Amendment’s] long-held, basic limitation on government power.  Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded, i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public​—​in the process.”

The Kelo ruling affirmed a particular kind of liberal vision: that large-scale and intricate government plans trump individuals’ property rights.  Fort Trumbull in New London, Conn., was bulldozed to fulfill the vision of politicians and developers eager to create a New Urbanist mixed-use “hub” for upscale living in the depressed town near the mouth of Long Island Sound.

But after nearly a decade, the land is nothing but vacant urban grassland. After homeowners were forced off their property for the sake of “economic development,” the city’s original development deal with Pfizer fell apart, and the urban-renewal corporation that ordered the destruction has not found a developer since to use the land.

Traditionally, these transfers of property, or eminent domain, had only allowed governments to acquire private lands in order to build a public structure like a school or highway. The Constitution permits seizures for such instances of “public use,” but the Supreme Court decision expanded that power to allow governments to acquire people’s land with “just compensation” for a “public purpose,” which in Kelo meant the government’s belief that a different owner might bring in more tax revenue.

Even that chilling premise has failed in New London. Instead of generating more economic activity, New London now has a massive plot of unused land generating no revenue, and serves more as a ground zero crater of an explosion of the Fifth Amendment.

In another fiasco following the Kelo decision one year later, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled the Atlantic Yards Project.  It was an ambitious massive mixed commercial/residential/recreational use project, including 16 high-rise buildings, for 22 acres in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights, an already gentrifying neighborhood that needed no public boost​—​all to be financed in part with some $2 billion in taxpayer aid.

The city used eminent domain to demolish well-maintained condominiums over the protests of their residents. Thanks to the real estate collapse, ground was not broken until 2012, and large portions of the project will likely may never be built.

Foreground:  Pleasant Ridge, Indiana's Kelo 2014

The City of Charlestown, Indiana has a community within it called Pleasant Ridge, much like the city of New London had their Fort Trumbull community.  The similarities do not end there, since government at three levels and developers are conspiring to get this modest community razed so that economic development might occur.  Perhaps the best treatment of the story has been in this Police State USA article reprinted here:

CHARLESTOWN, IN — A town is working to “demolish a working-class neighborhood” by seizing 354 homes and passing the land off to a private commercial developer. Using federal dollars and the highly-abused power of eminent domain, the city intends to evict multitudes of families to make way for economic progress.

The community under fire is called “Pleasant Ridge.” It contains hundreds of small homes that were built during World War II as military housing. Today the homes are privately-owned and contain working-class and poor families, many of which have owned their homes for decades.

The City of Charlestown intends to demolish the community in order to allow new commercial and residential real estate to be built in its place — privately-owned real estate.  The city declared its intentions in June 2014, when it applied to the state for permission to use eminent domain and for $5.3 million in “Hardest Hit Funds,” a federal grant program administered through Indiana’s Blight Elimination Program (BEP).  The land grab might not have been economically feasible if not for being directly subsidized and incentivized by the federal government.

Protests against the looming seizure have persisted for months, and Pleasant Ridge formed its own neighborhood association this summer to coordinate opposition.  The government’s decision on the project is supposed to be made in November or December.

The perilous power of eminent domain has been in use for as long as governments have existed, but it was traditionally (and constitutionally) constrained to projects involving “public use” of the land. These might have included roads or government facilities.

In 2005, however, the U.S. Supreme Court egregiously ruled that it was “constitutional” for a city to seize homes for the benefit of private developers (see: Kelo v. City of New London).  The benefits of “economic development” have been henceforth recognized to trump private property rights in the USA.  In other words, people can be involuntarily kicked off land they own free-and-clear, if government bureaucrats believe another private party could use it to bring in more tax revenue for the city.

The City of Charlestown has been further justifying its authoritarian maneuver by claiming that the Pleasant Ridge community is “blighted” and full of drugs, crime, and “transients.”  Officials claim building retail stores and new homes would be an improvement to Charlestown.

Residents contest these allegations, striking blows at the city’s credibility.  And, even if the claims were found to contain shades of truth, they would not morally excuse the wholesale violation of any family’s right to be secure in their own private property.

I’ve never had any trouble in this neighborhood, not one problem,” said resident Ellen Keith, who has lived in the community since 1968 and raised a family there.  “The mayor wants to say that we have a crime and drug problem. … I guess because we’re a poor neighborhood, they want to label it like that.”

“We’re not transients. We’re real people,” Mrs. Keith continued. “These people are my real neighbors, and I love my neighbors. … My house is not for sale.”

The use of eminent domain comes with compensation to the evicted landowners.  As the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states, “No person shall be… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The City of Charlestown has proclaimed that a paltry sum of $6,000 per home is the amount of “just compensation” that will be administered to the Pleasant Ridge refugees if the land grab takes place.

The nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice (IJ) has taken up the cause of Pleasant Ridge, leading the charge to defend the private property rights of the community.

Battleground:  What it Means to Us Citizens

Our area has its own stories similar to these.  The First Street Industrial Park in PM Township, land brought and developed using millions of tax dollars just after the Kelo decision, which sits empty except for the ambulance building and a very small (2-4 employee) welding company eight years after its construction completion.  The City of Ludington had used its authority and partnerships with developers to overdevelop the waterfront with mostly vacant condominiums (and several unbuilt condominium projects on the drawing board) through subtle means. 

The promise of sustainability that LIAA wants our communities to offer via revised master plans that see a greater influence on land by government at all levels, and a diminution of individual's private property rights is what we are going to see in the near future-- unless we can somehow reverse the momentum.  But this can only happen when individuals fight for their Constitutional rights against a united government growing less likely to respect them.

[Willy]

I wonder if the supporters and promoters of Agenda 21 were/are behind the scenes regarding these disgraceful Government abuses. How could the Supreme Court rule in favor of this type of property transfer? What is happening to us is precisely what happens in Communist/dictatorial run countries. Well done X

[XLFD]

Economic development and sustainability/resilience are two concepts that all government-control-hungry politicians strive for nowadays, and currently projects like the Lake Winds Energy Farm promise both, but are far short on the delivery.  Central planning didn't work for all those communist states back in the last century, and it definitely won't work for the USA in our future.