Tag: eminent domain

Pope Leo’s Childhood Home Faces Eminent Domain as He Relocates to a More Eminent Domain

“Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own,” wrote Pope Leo XIII, in his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, laying down the basics of Catholic social teaching.

The plans of contemporary socialists to seize private property, Leo XIII denounced as “emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.”

The last Pope Leo’s defense of private property adds no small amount of irony to the small Chicago suburb of Dolton, Illinois’ plan to honor the new American-born Pope Leo XIV by seizing his childhood home from its private owners.

Yesterday, Chicago-area media reported that Dolton officials plan to use eminent domain to take the home where Leo XIV, formerly Robert Francis Prevost, was raised from its current private owners to create a publicly accessible historic site.

At present, the owners are auctioning off the small, 1949-built home for a reserve price of $250,000.

In a Tuesday letter to the auction house running the sale, Dolton attorney Burton Odelson cautioned buyers against purchasing the house.

“Please inform any prospective buyers that their ‘purchase’ may only be temporary since the Village intends to begin the eminent domain process very shortly,” reads Odelson’s letter, per NBC Chicago.

Odelson told Chicago’s ABC7 that the village had initially tried to voluntarily purchase the home but had snagged on the sale price.

“We’ve tried to negotiate with the owner. [He] wants too much money, so we will either negotiate with the auction house or, as the letter stated that I sent to the auction house, we will take it through eminent domain, which is our right as a village,” Odelson said.

One wonders how outrageous the owners’ offered sale price was given its current auction price of $250,000.

The fact that the home was once lived in by the current pope surely doesn’t enable the owners to command that much of a sale premium on what is undeniably a quite modest dwelling.

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Supreme Court Lined Up to Consider Case That Could Kill ‘One of the Most Reviled Decisions in Recent Decades’

An often-criticized precedent from the Supreme Court 20 years ago that gives local governments permission to literally confiscate a landowner’s property and give it to someone else who may have more political influence could be overturned through a new case pending before the justices.

It is the Institute for Justice that has been fighting on behalf of Bryan Bowers, a New York landowner whose property was “seized” by a local government agency.

It was then given to his competitors.

The precedent that soon could be doomed is the Kelo decision from 2005 in which the court redefined “public use.”

That’s the standard that courts must use to determine whether governments can take over private property without the owner’s consent, and it often is associated with the construction of roads and bridges and such.

In Kelo, a single-vote on the court claimed that creating jobs or increasing tax revenue was just that “public use.”

Dissenters, including a left-leaning Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that now the government “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”

The IJ described the Kelo precedent as “one of the most reviled decisions in recent decades.”

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Town Secretly Seizes Developers’ Property Then Threatens Them With Trespassing Citation

As readers might recall, in the Providence suburb of Johnston, the town government and its very outspoken mayor have been attempting to seize a family of developers’ land to prevent their construction of an unsubsidized affordable housing project.

Last week the developers sued to stop the seizure in federal court, alleging that the “municipal campus” Johnston was seizing the land for was merely a pretext to stop new affordable housing.

Already, Rhode Island law establishes a fairly elaborate process that local governments have to follow when using eminent domain to take land for public buildings.

The developers’ constitutional challenge to the town’s seizure would typically delay things even more.

But in a surprise turn of events late last week, the town is claiming to have already seized the developers’ plot without providing any advance notice to the owners and without following the processes laid down in Rhode Island law.

The owners first learned of the seizure via Johnston’s mayor’s X post. With the town now alleging that the seizure is complete, it’s telling the former owners of the land they have until Friday to get off it or else they’ll be cited for trespassing.

In response, the developers are now filing for a temporary restraining order to stop what they describe as the town’s unprecedented lawlessness in taking the land.

“In 40 years, I’ve seen some pretty outrageous exercises of eminent domain powers. Never anything like this,” says Robert Thomas, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm, who is representing the developers.

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Hysterical, power-hungry EPA will require all property owners to have “no detectable level of lead dust in the air” – an impossible feat

Lead exposure is a serious health concern, especially for children, whose developing brains are drastically affected by the heavy metal. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going a step too far in regulating the heavy metal on private property.

According to new rules released by Biden’s EPA — homes, apartment buildings and child care facilities must test completely negative for lead. Under most circumstances, this is completely implausible. Lead particulate matter is ubiquitous is air measurements across the world.

Instead of taking realistic steps to mitigate the risk of heavy metal exposures, this new rule gives the EPA unlimited power and uses hysterical measurements to seize control over private property.

All air and soil contain detectable levels of lead, but there’s no reason to panic

Under the new rules, any detectable level of lead dust in a building would be considered a “lead hazard” and property owners would be ordered by the EPA and the courts to clean up the building. If remediation efforts are not good enough (and they won’t be in most cases), then the building may be condemned or torn down.

This is what happens when hysteria takes over the regulatory agencies: they virtue signal about detecting irrelevant concentrations and then use their findings to justify abusing their power. In the study National Trends in Lead Concentration in 2010-2023, the ambient lead level in the atmosphere across the US is just over 0.025 ug/m³. This is based on measurement of 79 sites across the country. Similarly in Europe, soil levels of lead are routinely measured at 25-35 ng/m³, which is approximately the same level.

According to the study, the average concentration of lead hasn’t gone up in the last decade. A recent document from the EPA shows that the dust in the air, averaged across all monitoring sites, ranges from 0.015 to 0.045 µg/m³.These are detectable levels of lead across the Earth’s atmosphere and throughout the soil, but the existence of lead at these levels does not mean everyone’s lives are in danger and it must be remediated at all costs!

The EPA, on the other hand, disagrees now, and will be able to take any detectable level of lead and seize power over the situation, claiming a public health threat in a building, and ordering the expensive remediation and takedown of properties throughout the country. While there has been a natural 87% decrease in the national average of lead in the Earth’s atmosphere, the EPA could still find a meaningless, detectable level of lead somewhere and claim dominion over that property, demanding remediation.

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What Happens When FEMA Buys Your House?

It’s been a rough hurricane season. Between them, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have devastated many communities throughout the southeast. Rebuilding what was lost will take years. 

But as devastating as these storms have been, they are sadly not unique. Property damage from storms and flooding is on the rise. Storms resulting in over a billion dollars in damages have become more frequent in recent years. 

The prospect of repeatedly having to rebuild properties in storm-prone areas has led some governments to pursue an unusual solution to the problem: buy the properties themselves. Some local governments, in partnership with federal agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have developed programs that use disaster relief funds to purchase homes in flood- or storm-prone areas. This isn’t the only way, or even the best way, to reduce the destruction from increasingly severe natural catastrophes. But the idea is that keeping such vulnerable properties vacant will save money in the long run because they won’t need to be continually rebuilt after storms.

Such buyouts are hardly ideal and can lead to some perverse situations. In 2021, an NPR investigation revealed that HUD was selling homes in flood-prone areas to unsuspecting buyers even as it was buying out homes in the same neighborhoods under a flood mitigation program. While not ideal, in a world where government disaster relief is a given, a voluntary buyout program could make fiscal sense in some circumstances. Voluntary buyout programs have been implemented in over a thousand counties and have been used to relocate almost 50,000 households throughout the country. 

The situation is very different when the buyout ceases to be voluntary. A little-known provision in the Hazard Mitigation and Relocation Assistance Act of 1993 authorizes local governments to implement a mandatory buyout program for flood-prone areas. So far, just three localities—Cedar Rapids in Iowa, Minot in North Dakota, and Harris County in Texas—have adopted a mandatory buyout program. The Harris County program is the largest of the three and is expected to forcibly purchase 585 households and 390 businesses by 2026 and turn the land into green space.  

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Fight Erupts When City Takes Private Property for ‘Park’

A fight has erupted over a decision by the Long Island town of Southold to take private property that the owners of a chain of hardware stores bought for a new location.

The problem is that the town took the land against the wishes of the owners using eminent domain, but it had no legitimate reason for doing that.

According to officials at the Institute for Justice, that’s known because the city insisted it needed the land for a “park,” but that turned out to be a “passive park” with no cleanup, no improvements, and the remnants of an old home and greenhouse left there.

The IJ explained, ‘When every legal effort to stop someone from using their property has failed, can the government simply take the land using eminent domain? That is the question at the heart of a new U.S. Supreme Court petition filed by a family-owned hardware store business whose property was taken by a small Long Island town.”

It is the Brinkmann family whose members already have five Long Island stores and obtained the Southold property for another.

“The town did everything it could to stop construction. After failing to drive the Brinkmanns away by attempting to interfere with the Brinkmanns’ land purchase, then imposing an exorbitant fee for a market impact study that the town never performed after being paid, and even deploying a selectively enforced moratorium on building permits to stifle the Brinkmanns’ permit application; the town voted to take the land by eminent domain for a park,” the IJ said.

At the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges said, “the government can take your property for almost any reason at all—including because it just doesn’t like you—so long as the government lies about why it is using eminent domain,” explained IJ lawyer Jeff Redfern.

“This is a dangerous precedent, and the Supreme Court should take this opportunity to clarify that it is unconstitutional to use eminent domain in bad faith, simply to stop someone from making a lawful use of their property.”

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REGULATION VS. EMINENT DOMAIN: AN ALTERNATE APPROACH TO ‘THE UNIDENTIFIED ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA DISCLOSURE ACT OF 2023’

Earlier this year, legislative power and unexplained phenomena collided when U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Mike Rounds introduced the “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of 2023.”

Contained within this groundbreaking amendment is a provision concerning “eminent domain,” a government legal tool that is often associated with infrastructure and public interest. However, in the context of UAP, a look at the implications, ethical challenges, and legal complexities tied to applying eminent domain to technology of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence (NHI) is warranted.

The UAP Act of 2023’s Eminent Domain clause has already sparked some debate amongst those with legal backgrounds that follow the subject. The current drafted legislation would allow the U.S. government to seize NHI technology and biological evidence. While it appears to grant access to undisclosed NHI discoveries for public benefit, the provision’s reach is broad, and will impact not only major defense contractors but also individuals, private corporations, and other entities involved in scientific explorations.

The challenge of appraising NHI technology for fair compensation and its potential disruption to national defense initiatives further complicates the matter.

What follows is an argument that introduces an alternative regulatory approach, which will help to promote compliance and transparency while preserving property rights and national security interests. The regulatory approach to the subject is a proper first step to safeguarding the balance between public interest and individual freedoms.

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County Eminent Domains the Strip Club Next Door to Make Room for More Parking

North Carolina strip club patrons might not be able to touch the dancers, but nothing stops the government from seizing the building they work in.

That’s the revealing truth in an eminent domain case out of Wilmington, North Carolina, where the New Hanover County government (which contains Wilmington) is trying to seize the neighboring Cheetah Premier Gentlemen’s Club to build what it claims is much-needed parking.

“The county identified a need to expand parking facilities to better accommodate our citizens when visiting the newly constructed government center. Exercising eminent domain to acquire the neighboring property is a legal and measured step towards fulfilling this need,” said County Manager Chris Coudriet in an emailed statement to Reason earlier this month.

The county commission voted to authorize eminent domain of the Cheetah Club during its late Monday night meeting on November 6. The resolution authorized the county to spend $2.36 million acquiring the club.

Conspicuously, the resolution authorizing the seizure of the club wasn’t on the commission’s agenda, and was only introduced in the final minutes of the meeting by Coudriet, reports local public radio station WHQR. The station also reports that Coudriet referred to the property only by its tax ID number and didn’t mention why the property was being seized, other than to say it was for public use.

That left the owners of both the business and the underlying property blindsided.

Property owner Jerry Reid describes the eminent domain resolution as “coming out of the blue.” Michael Barber, a lawyer for the owners of the Cheetah Club likewise said the first time he heard about the seizure was early Tuesday morning, after the commission vote.

The presence of such an “adult” business next to the county center of government has caused its fair share of embarrassment. One county commissioner told the local Port City Daily that “the optics have always been an issue.” North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell also criticized county commissioners about their offices’ proximity to a strip club at a hearing earlier this year.

The sudden, seemingly surreptitious effort to seize the club has Barber speculating that the eminent domain effort has more to do with public appearances than public facilities.

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JPMorgan CEO suggests government seize private property to quicken climate initiatives

In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon suggested that the U.S. government and climate conscious corporations may have to seize citizen’s private property to enact climate initiatives while there still time to stave off climate disasters.

Dimon declared Tuesday that “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” may need to invoke “eminent domain” in order to get the “adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

“Eminent domain” is a legal term that describes the government using its power to expropriate private property for public use, provided the government provides private owners proper compensation.

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Texas School District Threatens to Seize 79-Year-Old Man’s Home for Stadium Parking Lot

A family in Houston, Texas, is at risk of having their generational home seized to make way for the expansion of the adjacent high school football stadium’s parking lot.

In April, the Aldine Independent School District voted to authorize the use of eminent domain to seize the home and surrounding acre of land currently owned and occupied by 79-year-old Travis Upchurch, reported the Houston Chronicle in July.

The land has been in Upchurch’s family since 1916 when his relatives first immigrated to the area from Sweden. At the time they settled there, the area was predominately agricultural, dominated by dairy farms and pecan trees.

Beginning in the 1970s, Aldine ISD started purchasing up the land around the Upchurch property as part of the construction of its current football stadium. Today, it’s surrounded on three sides by stadium parking. The vacant lot abutting the fourth side of the property is also owned by the district.

“My dad has pretty much been in a high school football stadium parking lot since then,”  Travis Upchurch’s daughter, Tara Upchurch, tells Reason.

Tara Upchurch says that she had expected Aldine ISD would want to buy the land once her father passed away. Her family’s expectation was that until then, he’d be able to stay in their longtime family home.

That expectation was upended in June when Travis Upchurch received a letter in the mail informing him that the school district was intent on purchasing his land as part of a $50 million rebuild of the existing stadium.

“It was pretty shocking,” says Tara Upchurch. “It was really hard to process the loss of it.”

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