Affordable Housing Institute : US

“All politics is local,” said former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (from Cambridge!), and all real estate (including real estate taxation!) is local.  And a very curious localized thing has happened with the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London eminent domain taking decision: a grass-roots blowback:

 

 

Imperious government gets Americans mad …

 

    The backlash against the judicial ruling has not received much attention in the national press, although legislative leaders in more than two dozen states have proposed statutes and/or state constitutional amendments to restrict local governments’ eminent-domain powers.

    Besides Alabama, legislation to ban or restrict the use of eminent domain for private development has been introduced in 16 states:  

 

California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas.

    Legislators have announced plans to introduce eminent-domain bills in seven more states:

 

Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Dakota, South Carolina, Wisconsin,

 

 

They’re against it

 

and lawmakers plan to act on plan to act on previously introduced bills.

 

Colorado, Georgia, Virginia

 

In other words, 26 of the 50 states now have movements afoot to limit eminent domain’s use in urban renewal.  By anybody’s standards, that’s a citizen movement — especially when the states have nothing in common.  Kelo, especially as it has been (mis)reported in the public press, has struck a nerve.  Indeed, it has stimulated the limbic brain in the American psyche: the defense of homesteading private property rights.

 

What makes this remarkable to me, aside from its civics-lesson quality, is …

 

… that in deciding Kelo, the Supreme Court was only following established precedent regarding eminent domain for urban renewal of ‘blighted’ districts. 

 

    Although the Alabama law that the governor signed yesterday would prohibit such eminent-domain seizures, it contains an exception that would permit takeovers of blighted properties that could be turned over to private interests — a provision that critics call a loophole for future abuses.

As I’ve discussed at length before (full post in downloadable .pdf here), the issue shouldn’t be about the ‘due process’ claim (can government do it?), the debate should focus on ‘just compensation’ (what is the fair price to pay?).  The Supreme Court decision simply extends the concept of ‘blight’ — instead of waiting for a neighborhood to be economically dead, Kelo allows government to act if it finds the neighborhood terminally ill.  Still, many householders instinctively feel that one woman’s decay is another’s established neighborhood:

 

    Polls show unusual unity on strengthening property rights. A Quinnipiac University poll, for example, found that 89% of voters in Connecticut want the legislature to limit eminent domain. A University of New Hampshire poll found that 93% of state residents were opposed to taking property for private development.

 

I’ll have more about Kelo soon, when I get time to compile a proper post.  In the meantime, a reminder of American values:

 

 

 

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