Where were all the property rights advocates the last 20 years?

This is so amusing, so many people wake up this morning thinking there is some crisis.

The practice of local government using eminent domain to force the sale of property, and then turning the property over to private developers under a redevelopment statute and pursuant to a redevelopment plan, is common, unremarkable, and has been going on for 20 or 30 years, routinely. Its been going on since I was admitted to the bar 17 years ago. It raises no eyebrows among anyone in real estate, urban planning, or law. I don't want to hear any half informed exert lecturing me about how I don't understand, this is my profession, I know whereof I speak. I have actually read the case, too, imagine that. Its a typical ED-redevelopment case. It just affirms longstanding practice. It would have been shocking if they'd overturned 30 years of law.

So yesterday the Supreme Court refuses to overturn 30 years of practice and accepted law.

So my question for the whining, panicking, handwringing crowd is, where were you yesterday?

It was going on yesterday, last year, 20 years ago. Not one post, in 3 years, I have never heard one person complain about this practice. Yet today, hundreds have decided that its the worstest, most horribilist thing to ever happen.

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Except that the Court has given it precident.

It doesn't mean that this is a new policy. It doesn't mean it will become a widespread tactic.

Like the OP said, this has been going on for years.

Smug?

Just curious.

There's really no excuse for it; it just happened. I only became politically awake in the last couple of years, but I'm young. I was wasn't around in the 1970s, and I was a baby in the 1980s, a kid in the 1990s.

Were did everyone else go in that time? I dunno. Ask them. It was on their watch, not mine. I simply inherited this situation from them.

I don't know where all the people now up in arms have been all along.

In a sense the whole Settlement was one massive series of abuses of eminent domain laws.

It's ugly, but it's the way the country has accommodated its population and economic growth. In 100 years when there's population shrinkage and consolidation people will be begging governments to buy up their land and rural towns at market value and make national parks and such out of them. It's actually happening in the northern Great Plains at the moment.

years too. :eyes: When something like this just kinda sneaks up and smacks you in the face you expect no "uninformed" reaction? Maybe it's never raised an eyebrow in the areas you described because none of those folks were getting their shit taken away. Finally, you have already started a thread on this, why would you start another one and then tell people not to respond?

Jay

Because it's not exactly a subject that gets a lot of scrutiny by the media. I know growing up in Hawaii, when the City and County of Honolulu would use eminent domain, the people would gather to protest
against it, but it was a local thing.

Now it's been brought out into the National spotlight by this case, and the people now realize that their homes can now be taken from them, and there is nothing that they can do about it.

By the way let us know when eminent domain is used on you, it's real easy to have no empathy when something happens to someone else. And the SCOTUS has constantly overturned what once was practiced and accepted law, if they had done so with this case it wouldn't have been the first time.

I was up all night after reading it, sick with rage.

then tell us how you feel when YOUR property is snatched away. :sarcasm:

case awhile back, with many posters concerned. And, here where I live there is a group fighting to keep the city to keep from seizing farm property for a water treatment facility. But, we are up against real estate interests who employ many people in my Boomtown area and we've lost so much manufacturing that "Real Estate Rules."

I think that what the Supreme Court did was to legitimize it. I don't know why the moderate judges approved this, though. I'm hoping to see some articles on their opinion. They must have ruled this way for a reason. Hopefully it can be challenged and overturned. Do you have any ideas how that could be done? Getting the Supremes to overturn their decision on this?

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congress - as it contained language to allow energy companies to assert eminent domain for power transmission.

A technicality, perhaps (in the statement that noone has discussed the issue), but I did post about it numerous times.

Institute for Justice
http://www.ij.org/

Winning cases. I believe you are familiar with them? CRDA v. Coking et al.

As for why no one here was sharing their outrage in the past three years, well, I believe most of them were busy watching stolen elections, wars, etc... and not slugging it out with dirty developers and speculators. And also some here still believed that the SCOTUS might actually still have some purpose and are just expressing their outrage.

As for anyone who has said you don't understand the issue, well, after 17 years as an attorney your skin should be a little thicker.

prior to this case. I guess I had a vague idea that if the state wanted to build a school or a highway they could evict me. But I never had any idea that Walmart or some big corporation could decide they would like to build a store on my property and have me forcibly evicted (with the help of their friends on the local city council-- such help presumably being well rewarded with campaign contributions).

A school or highway is one thing but if a corporation wants me to move so it can make more millions in profits, let them make me an offer I can't refuse. Like 3 or 4 times the current market value.

that this is NOT the same as it has been for 30 years? There's enough information on your OTHER thread explaining it to you:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3928868

You responded exactly 4 times on that thread... why did you start this one? How is it different?

because here where I live, the county has been taking prime property for cents on the dollar. First they declare them blighted, then they take them...Many of these are from family's that have owned the property from the time Wisconsin became settled and I have always disagreed with this practice....It just plain SUCKS...

Many, many people have been forced to sell their homes for a massive, expensive and basically useless floodwall project.

In some areas, once beautiful small-town Appalachian communities have been replaced with massive concrete walls.