The Real Estate Section in today’s Washington Post has an informative article by Kenneth R. Harney on the likely winners and losers from Kelo, “Court Ruling Leaves Poor at Greatest Risk“:
Where does that leave you if your local government sees potential for a higher and better use for your home and land? What if you, like the New London homeowners, don’t want to give up your home no matter what you’re offered?
In brief: The court’s decision leaves you in a weaker position, at least under federal law, than you might imagine. The majority of justices on the current court appear to be saying that “public purposes” may be discernible in a wide variety of private projects. If, for example, your city’s political leaders decided that all the houses on your street would produce higher tax revenue as a regional shopping center, they are now in a stronger position to seize your house under the court’s Kelo doctrine.
As a practical matter, who’s really at greater risk of such seizures? Surely not homeowners in the wealthier parts of town, who have the ears of, if not control of, the local political establishment.
Dana Berliner, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, the libertarian public interest law firm that represented the New London homeowners, says certain categories of homeowners are at heightened risk. Based on her research on more than 10,000 of what she terms “abusive” eminent domain seizures across the country, the high-risk homeowners are:
· Residents of older neighborhoods in locations that make them attractive for a supposedly “higher and better use” — for example, near a waterfront or in a low-density area adjacent to higher-density commercial areas.
· Working-class and middle-income areas in general.
· Neighborhoods with high concentrations of lower-income minority residents.
This being the Real Estate Section of the paper, the article also provides some practical advice for what homeowners can try to do to prevent having their homes seized and given to politically-influential developers.
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