eminent domain

Eminently unjustified

adamg — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 14:21:27 +0000

Carpundit argues that the way the Boston Redevelopment Authority leases prime waterfront property to some Melrose guy at well below market rates is further proof that the BRA should be shut down. What he didn't read in the Globe article, though, was why the BRA owns the marina property in the first place. For that, you need to go back to a 2003 Herald article - seems the BRA grabbed the land using its powers of eminent domain (long before the Kelo decision).

Remember the West End

adamg — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:04:38 +0000

Rob says what happened to the West End in the 1950s - a city eager for new tax revenue hands an entire neighborhood over to a developer who puts up a banal collection of sterile high rises - should give us all pause following the Supreme Court's Kelo ruling:

... Time will tell, but autocratic municipal rulers may be undertaking massive urban renewal plans before you know it. Municipalities (at least in the Boston area) lose money on every new family that moves into town, due to the exorbitant cost of schooling the children. Towns thought of as wealthy around here are leaving their roads potholed and unpaved, for lack of funds because the schools ate them all up. Municipalities had been doing all they could to discourage new residential development, including enacting minimum lot sizes and moratoriums on teardowns. They also give tax breaks to seniors inclined to move out of town so that new children won't move in.

Now SCOTUS has handed these municipalities a new weapon in their fight to keep their budgets in line: the bulldozer. Simply bulldoze your poorest residents and get them out of town, and put in a giant box store instead. ...

Carpundit notes favorable Kelo utterances from the Boston Redevelopment Authority and City Council President Michael Flaherty (who wants to use the ruling to seize Fan Pier):

Let's shutter the BRA and vote out Michael Flaherty.

The rich are different from you and me

adamg — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 02:29:02 +0000

Jay pulls out a snap quiz on Fan Pier and its Chicago owners:

... If Fan Pier was owned by some working-class dope with a God-awful postwar vinyl-sided pillbox house on the waterfront, do you think his home would have been condemned by now? Quick answer: Yes or no. ...

Could it happen here?

adamg — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 01:42:55 +0000

With the Supreme Court ruling it's OK for cities to hand private property over to developers in certain cases, Empirefalls raises the spectre of Wal-Mart moving into Dover and Lexington.

David says it's a case of when good judges go bad.