O.T. Make Way For Yet Another Shopping Mall

[G Henslee]

[Percival P. Cassidy]

This wouldn't be too bad in practice (athough still bad in principle) if the city reckoned compensation on the basis of the resultant commercial zoning. E.g., Individual A's property is a% of the total area whose commercial value is $X million, so s/he gets a% of $X million rather than "fair market value" of the residence being taken.

Perce

On 06/24/05 10:57 am G Henslee tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

[G Henslee]

I'd be willing to bet $X million that will never happen.

[Eric Tonks]

What happened to the US "land of the free" attitude. It seems that US citizens now have governments that think more like dictatorships when they have the power. A man's home is no longer his castle, when it is convenient to take it for someone else's profit margin. It seems that large corporations and governments are running rough shod over the private landowner.

Here in Ontario, Canada, a homeowner is considered a tenant on the Queen's property. But it seems that we have more property ownership rights than the US citizen. While it used to be different, towns now will do anything to avoid expropriating property. It is reserved for the "last option" in most cases. I have never heard of a town in my area that would take property only to turn it over to a commercial business.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 06/24/05 12:02 pm G Henslee tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

I'm sure you're correct -- and I meant to add that point myself.

But even where the exercise of eminent domain is for some public facility and not just to satisfy developers and fill the city's coffers, there needs to be compensation beyond mere "fair market value" for the residence being taken. Many years ago in Brisbane, Australia the State (not the city, IIRC) compulsorily purchased a bunch of little old houses on tiny lots in an inner-city neighborhood in order to construct a new freeway. The residents, mostly elderly, may even have been given more than "fair market value," but it wasn't enough to buy anything else even if they moved way out of the city. I think many of them had to move in with other family members or else bank the money and find a rental somewhere.

And to add insult to injury, even the earthworks for the project were never completed. The whole freeway project was abandoned.

Perce

[Gort]

If someone wasn't planning on doing that why did it get placed for the Supreme Court to make a decision on ?