Nathan Newman wrote:
>So it's ok by you to flatten a neighborhood to make way for a Wal-Mart?
That's been done for decades. What now will be prevented is taking property from rich residential and commercial landowners to build a whole range of projects, including affordable housing.
Check out the work of groups like the Community Rights Counsel, who co-authored the amicus brief in defense of city eminent domain rights. These are progressives fighting rightwing takings litigation across the country and promoting democratic regulation of land property. And here's some key arguments from their brief: http://www.communityrights.org/PDFs/Briefs/Kelo.pdf
"The use of eminent domain often is essential to assemble a critical mass of property needed for development in metropolitan areas because market failures make it impossible for the private sector to do the job alone. These market failures include the difficulty of assembling an appropriately-sized development site due to holdouts; the legal risks associated with cleaning up lightly contaminated "brownfield" sites; clouded property title on key parcels; the need to improve street patterns; and decisions by existing businesses to leave nearby land vacant to prevent competitors from entering the market.20 Local officials use eminent domain to address these and other market failures by acquiring parcels, providing for cleanup, clearing title, and removing other obstacles to development.21 Amicus Norquist argues that economic development should be left to the private sector. See Br. Am. Cur. John Norquist 3. But in many instances market failures require a public-private partnership, including the use of eminent domain, to remove barriers to investment.22
Grassroots organizations often support these efforts. In Boston, city officials have worked closely with a non-profit community organization to provide affordable housing and breathe life back into decaying neighborhoods.23 Eminent domain was the "only way to acquire a coherent area of land on which to implement its plan" because "[d]eveloping only the city-owned land would defeat the goals of critical mass and community-controlled neighborhood redevelopment."
What happens is that "hold-outs" force cities to payup far more than their land is worth, forcing taxpayers, mostly poorer renters, to transfer funds to richer landowners.
The brief cites a number of examples of successful economic redevelopment linked to eminent domain.
Or hear is old Berkeley Communist speaking to the Florida Housing Coalition about his work on affordable housing in Boston, where the profile notes, "Acquiring eminent domain authority from the city of Boston was a first and allowed the project to acquire vacant and abandoned properties for active use in the community." http://www.flhousing.org/images/05-conf-1pg-keynote-fhc-contactinfo-not-shaded.pdf
And in New York, let's see this reasonably balanced piece by progressive economic development activist, Brad Lander, who discusses the debate on the big Atlantic Yards development and Kelo: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/20050712/12/1479
"David Goldberg, formerly counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, says no. Goldberg has been collaborating with Community Rights Counsel, a DC-based group which works with community groups and municipalities seeking to preserve the power of the government to regulate development; for example, to require affordable housing or land conservation. They were concerned that the Kelo case was one more effort by right-wingers to weaken the ability of cities and states to guide development for public purposes. So Goldberg prepared an amicus brief for supporters of the Ratner project (the Carpenter's union, Rev. Herbert Daughtry, and BUILD). Goldberg challenges the claims of Norman Siegel and others that these cases involve "differential impact" on low-income people. While the Robert Moses-style urban renewal of the 1950s and 1960s often displaced low-income tenants - rendering "just compensation" meaningless since they did not own the property and usually received very little for their displacement - in these cases it is primarily middle-class homeowners and businesspeople, who are being paid fair market price for their property. "
The point is not that all uses of eminent domain are justified-- of course there are bad actors (seems to be a theme here) -- but wholesales attacks on eminent domain serves property owners at the expense of everyone else.
Doug, you seem to have suddenly started to sound like an early 19th century Republican Reformer, denouncing corrupt unions and cities, and applauding rhetoric that leads to legal straightjackets on both.
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