How would you feel if someone wanted to buy the beachfront home your family built decades ago, just so it could be demolished and replaced with luxury townhouses and condos? Would you gladly sell — you’re getting tired of those noisy, crashing waves, anyway — or would you put up a fight, like Long Branch, New Jersey’s Lori Vendetti?
Eminent domain — the government’s constitutional right to take private property for public use as long as the owner is justly compensated — has become quite the controversial subject since 2005’s United States Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, in which the justices ruled that eminent domain can be used to transfer property ownership from one private owner to another for redevelopment. Citizens like Vendetti have fought to keep their property (her family built and has owned a home in Long Branch for over 40 years), while some local city councils and developers have argued that purchasing the property is their constitutional right, as the income generated from the redevelopment would make money and create jobs for the community.
In this episode of the Angie’s List podcast, we speak with Lori Vendetti, as well as Steven Anderson and Lora Lucero. Anderson, a legal expert and director of the Castle Coalition — a project of the Institute for Justice which helps activists around the country fight eminent domain abuse — says eminent domain’s definition of public property use has deteriorated from projects such as schools, roads, and fire stations to private enterprises like luxury homes. Lora Lucero, staff attorney for the American Planning Association, says eminent domain is an important tool in the government’s toolbox, and that the most important issue is not whether the power’s being abused, but whether compensation for property is fairly determined.
Listen to the audio program below — in QuickTime or MP3 streaming and downloadable formats — for the full story.
Has your home been taken because of eminent domain, or are you currently in a battle to keep your property? Send us an email.
What’s your opinion on eminent domain? Is this constitutional power being abused or not? Share your opinions with other listeners.
Episode 8: Eminent Domain: This land is my land, this land is your land. [7:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Episode 8: Eminent Domain: This land is my land, this land is your land. [7:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Hi, enjoyed the vendetti piece. The same city, Long Branch is attempting to
seize our church own building, after not allowing us to use it as a church. We
recently won a US Federal Court decision that found Long Branch violated our
civil rights when they refused to allow us to redevelop the building and use it
as church on lower Broadway. However, even though the Federal court said they
violated our rights, they can still take it by eminent domain after prohibiting
us from using it for 14 years. It is also my home, as I live on the second
floor of the building.
Our eminent domain case comes before the court in Freehold on March 14.
I am not a fan of Eminent Domain. I understand its origins and why it was necessary for railroads when the country was being opened up. And I also understand that it sometimes necessary for the public good. However, it is being abused big-time in the modern era by greedy land developers with city councils in their back pocket. People deserve to be able to keep their homes if they can keep their homes in reasonable repair. No one wants to live next to a slum. However, taking someone’s property just so someone else can build a highrise or an expensive condo is not right and it is not fair. People have ties to the land. This is what fuels so much controversy in the Middle East. People have a connection to what is theirs - what they have paid for with their hard work and their sweat and their tears. Generations sometimes live in a house and there are many memories. How do you fairly compensate the elderly who have lived in a house that has been theirs for years, which is in good repair, and is a home where they hope to live out their days, only to see someone become interested in their land, and then use Eminent Domain to try and take that away from them? What amount of money is fair? Eminent Domain should only be used to obtain land for fire houses, schools, and other ESSENTIAL facilities, and never to turn that land over to a private developer. Serious reform is needed - in fact, it is long overdue.
Any tool that has been abused as much as this one has by a governement needs to be taken away from it! I expect this kind of crap in a Stalinist dictatorship, not in the good old U.S. of A.!
My opinion?
The new definition of Eminent Domain is absolutely wrong.
Schools, churches, gov’t offices, etc are ok. Taking property away from individuals to
line the pocketbooks of the wealthy is intrinsically and ethically abusive to the private citizen and greed at its worst.