The editors of the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy have asked me to write a short piece on this issue. And the article is now available on SSRN. It will soon be published in the Colloquy and will later be reprinted in the regular Northwestern University Law Review.
My piece is a reply to an earlier Colloquy article by Northwestern University Law School Professor David A. Dana, which is available here. David's abstract summarizes his argument well:
This Essay provides a review of the changes in state law following Kelo v. City of New London, and in particular focuses on the dominant reform: the prohibition of economic development condemnations in non-poor areas (which Kelo allows, as a matter of federal constitutional law) coupled with continued allowance for blight condemnations in poor areas. This dominant reform, the Essay argues, privileges the stability of middle-class households over the stability of poor ones, and thus expresssively devalues poor people and poor communities in legal and political discourse.
Here's an excerpt from my abstract:
. . . I agree with Professor Dana that the problem of blight condemnations and its impact on the poor deserve greater attention but take issue with his argument that post-Kelo reform efforts have systematically treated the poor worse than middle and upper class homeowners.
Most of the states that have enacted post-Kelo reform laws have either banned both blight and economic development takings or defined "blight" so broadly that virtually any property can be declared "blighted" and taken . . . Only nine states are actually guilty of allowing only the condemnation of "blighted" areas, narrowly defined. Even these nine flawed reforms are probably better for the poor than no reform at all. Such a law might benefit many poor people who live in non-blighted areas and are potentially vulnerable to economic development takings. Survey data suggests that the poor themselves overwhelmingly oppose economic development condemnations, suggesting that they are not much concerned about the "expressive harms" that worry Professor Dana. Finally, the exclusion of blighted property from the ban on "economic development" condemnations in some states is not necessarily explained by indifference to or contempt for the interests of the poor , , ,
http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com/
As far as helping or hurting the poor one has to be clear on in what sense you mean that. In particular I think it is totally plausible that economically the poor end up overall in a better position as the result of eminent domain based economic development and blight removal. However, the arguments against this sort of seizure have usually been rights based rather than an analysis of overall economic impact. In short if the people who get their land taken suffer significant economic harm but not so much worse off as to offset the total economic benefit the project brings to other poor people do we say poor people are worse off or not? Do we count their personal suffering (losing their emotionally significant house) in this analysis?
This is unlikely because it assumes that 1) eminent domain is needed to create development projects that benefit poor neighborhoods, and 2) that those projects that benefit the poor will in fact be the ones that succeed in the political process that determines which areas will get condemned. Assumption 1 is flawed because there are excellent private sector mechanisms for instituting development projects that really do create more value than they destroy. Assumption 2 is flawed because the poor have relatively little political power and are far more likely to be victims of eminent domain than beneficiaries of it.
I discuss both points in much greater detail in an earlier article, available here.
The present article focuses on the "expressive harm" concerns raised by Prof. Dana.