Quote:WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

The 5-4 ruling — assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as handing “disproportionate influence and power” to the well-heeled — represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex.

Those residents argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to “just compensation” for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. But residents involved in the lawsuit expressed dismay and pledged to keep fighting.

“It’s a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country,” said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would refuse to leave his home, even if bulldozers showed up. “I won’t be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word.”

Jobs, tax revenue cited
Writing for the court’s majority in Thursday’s ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens said local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community. States are within their rights to pass additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened, he said.

“The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue,” Stevens wrote.

He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

O’Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.

“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Thomas filed a separate opinion to argue that seizing homes for private development, even with “just compensation,” is unconstitutional.

“The consequences of today’s decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful,” Thomas wrote. “So-called ’urban renewal’ programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted.”

Homeowners refused to budge
The case involves Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn., who filed a lawsuit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes to clear the way for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.

The residents had refused to budge, arguing it was an unjustified taking of their property.

“I’m not willing to give up what I have just because someone else can generate more taxes here,” said homeowner Matthew Dery, whose family has lived in the neighborhood known as Fort Trumbull for more than 100 years.

New London contends the condemnations are proper because the development plans serving a “public purpose” — such as boosting economic growth — are valid “public use” projects that outweigh the property rights of the homeowners.

The Connecticut Supreme Court agreed with New London, ruling 4-3 in March 2004 that the mere promise of additional tax revenue justified the condemnation.

Quote:“Fuck you, Mr. Individual Hard Woking Tax-paying Citizen of the United States of America,

Quote:It’s not good for you.

Quote:Because. Now cities that had acquired land at a previous time can now use that land, and sell it, whenever the hell they want, whenever the land has a higher value.

Quote:We’ve become land speculators now. So, remember that house I bought from you just off Cedar Grove Avenue? Well, I bought a shitload of them, in fact, I bought the whole lot of land! At fair market value! We had no other competition, LOL!

Quote:Yes, but we never said that about city parkland. And if we did, how hard do you really think it is to get that fixed and taken care off? You know how much support we would be able to garner to be able to turn shitty parks which attract an abnormal amount of criminal activity into something that would improve, or, rather, maintain and enforce, a better way of life, especially since we can go and make a quick buck off of it? You know how easy it would be to sell off public land to private developers? Shit, we got the whole thing workd out. Buy the land from you when you got your house in your 30’s, and then hustle it off right after you die.

Quote:Because we never set a time limit as to when the land will be put to public use, or rather public benefit. We can do whatever we see fit as being a “public use”, and we don’t even need to turn it over to the public at any specified time. So, basically, I can take your land, hold onto it until the right deal comes along, and then propose my new re-zoning or economic development plan. Then I can take your former land, now mine, and having been in my hand for a long time, and currently used for nothing, except alleged “parkland”, now, I can just give it to the developer, he gets all the profit, I get the value I want for the property, and I get all the taxes his development generates. Meanwhile, you’ve died, and your family barely knows that you got jipped out of your property, and the city has made all the money that you should have gotten in a free and open market.


Sucks to be you I guess.