Tag: eminent domain

Elderly artist forced to vacate shack he’s maintained for nearly 80 years

An elderly Massachusetts artist is being kicked out of the Cape Cod shack he maintained for nearly 80 years as the National Park Service begins granting long-term leases to new renters.

Salvatore Del Deo, 94, resided in the Provincetown dune shack for the past 77 summers, where he paid taxes and was deeded the dwelling, according to CBS News.

But the Park Service does not recognize Del Deo as the owner and has ordered him to vacate the shack.

The artist and veteran arrived in Provincetown in 1946, where he met Jeanne “Frenchie” Schnell, who built a remote dune shack along the Cape Cod National Seashore as Del Deo helped maintain the abode.

In 1953, after serving in the Korean War, Del Deo returned to Provincetown, where he met his future wife, Josephine, at a party.

Schnell gifted the shack to Del Deo and his wife as a honeymoon suite.

The Park Service took possession of 19 dune shacks in the ’60s through eminent domain, offering the current owners lifetime leases, and the new renters signing long-term leases, while others only leased year-to-year.

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Seize property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief

The chief executive of JP Morgan has suggested that governments should seize private land to build wind and solar farms in order to meet net zero targets. 

Jamie Dimon, the longstanding boss of the Wall Street titan who donates to the Democratic Party, said green energy projects must be fast-tracked as the window for averting the most costly impacts of global climate change is closing. 

In his annual shareholder letter, Mr Dimon said: “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way. 

“We may even need to evoke eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

Eminent domain is when a government or state agency carries out a compulsory purchase of private property for public use and compensates the asset holder. 

The proposal is unusual, especially coming from the longest-serving chief executive of a Wall Street bank, and could stir controversy as states in the US seek to crackdown on seizure orders. 

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North Carolina Using Eminent Domain To Seize Homes and a Church for Electric Car Factory

VinFast is the first company to develop electric vehicles in its native Vietnam, and it’s now making inroads into the American market. Last year, it announced it would build a factory in North Carolina that would manufacture both electric cars and batteries. Then, last week, the company said it would not be able to begin production at the facility until 2025, rather than the initial summer 2024 target.

An upstart company needing extra time to fulfill its promises is hardly news. But in this case, a lot hangs in the balance, as the North Carolina government has pledged to use eminent domain to evict multiple homeowners, businesses, and a church.

When Gov. Roy Cooper announced the deal in March 2022, he called the project “transformative” and said it would “bring many good jobs to our state.” CNBC cited the project when it named North Carolina America’s Top State for Business, marveling that Cooper, a Democrat, was able to strike such business-friendly deals with a General Assembly dominated by Republicans.

While it was only founded in 2017, VinFast has the backing of Vietnam’s wealthiest citizen and has been valued somewhere between $20 billion and $60 billion. For the North Carolina factory, the company pledged to spend $4 billion and create 7,500 jobs within five years. In exchange, the state promised incentives totaling $1.2 billion, including $450 million toward site preparation; $400 million from Chatham County, where the facility would be located; and a $316 million grant over 32 years in which the company is reimbursed for the state income tax money its employees pay.

But taxpayer money isn’t the only thing the state is giving away. As part of its site preparation process, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) also planned roadway improvements to accommodate the traffic a new factory would create. Those plans would require displacing a total of 27 homes, five businesses, and Merry Oaks Baptist Church, which has stood on its spot since 1888.

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Texas Outlet Fabricates Story Of Libertarian Inciting Violence Over Eminent Domain

As RedState aptly noted in a Thursday piece, many seem to believe that local media outlets are significantly more true to the facts than those who cover news nationally. 

Unfortunately, it turns out that smaller news outlets also fall short of the truth.

The Current, which is the self-described “premiere multimedia source of alternative news, events and culture” for San Antonio, Texas, since 1986, recently put out a report disingenuously suggesting that Bexar County Libertarian Party head JR Haseloff attempted to incite violence over the city’s plan to use eminent domain to seize control of a man’s bar for city renovations. 

This was referring to an address Haseloff delivered to the city council arguing in favor of allowing Vince Catu, the bar’s owner, to maintain control of his property. According to their reporting, Haseloff “suggested that some property-rights advocates may resort to violence if San Antonio uses eminent domain to take over downtown bar Moses Rose’s Hideout.”

“While out of an abundance of caution, we marked this as a peaceful protest, I am here to testify to you that there are men, women, organizations and individuals across the state of Texas that are very much prepared to sacrifice much more to prevent your theft of this man’s property,” Haseloff said in his remarks to the city council. “I can only pray that you and politicians across Texas are receiving this message.”

He added, “Let me be clear, we will not stand idly by and watch you steal property from one of our fellow Texans. We will fight, and we will win.”

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Homeowners find out their town has promised their houses to big corporation

Eminent domain is the legal concept that government can take people’s private property – with just compensation – when it is needed for a public benefit like a road or a bridge.

But in recent years governments repeatedly have used the scheme to take private property – and then have turned it over to another private owner, and such disputes have come up repeatedly in court.

There’s another fight erupting now.

This time it’s the Institute for Justice that is fighting on behalf of homeowners who live along Burnet Road in Onandaga County, New York.

That’s because county officials – and Micron Technology – have announced plans for the company to build a microchip facility in the White Pine Commerce Park in Clay.

The proposed construction site includes not only parts of the commerce park, which largely has been vacant since the 1990s, but the private properties of multiple homeowners.

“My father built this home, and my family has lived here for decades. I’m not going to sit back and let the county take my family’s home and hand it over to a private corporation,” explained one homeowner, Paul Richer, in a statement released by the IJ.

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