Cities May Destroy Your Home to Build a Mall

The Supreme Court really blew it today in a decision that's going to have long-lasting negative effects on our citizens. The Court ruled that cities may take private property, such as your home, and turn around and give that property to a developer to build something that will generate more tax revenue.

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.

Connecticut residents involved in the lawsuit expressed dismay and pledged to keep fighting.

"It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would refuse to leave his home, even if bulldozers showed up. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."

Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Institute for Justice representing the families, added: "A narrow majority of the court simply got the law wrong today and our Constitution and country will suffer as a result."

I agree with Mr. Bullock. Cities have long had the power to seize private property for public works projects such as schools and roads (under the legal theory of eminent domain), but up until now they have not had the ability to seize property just because they'd rather put something else there that generates more revenue.

We had a case here in Orange County where the city tried to take a church's property in order to give it to Costco. The church eventually won that case at the lower levels, but given this new precedent, every church (which don't generate sales or income taxes) is in trouble if their city decides that the land the church sits on would be better used for retail or commercial space. And what's to stop cities from taking whole swathes of homes to allow development of a mall? Thanks to the Supreme Court, nothing.

This opens the door to a whole range of abuses. What if you're a city leader in an town that has a neighborhood of low income or economically depressed residents? Such neighborhoods often generate more crime and other problems, so instead of aggressively policing the area and cleaning up the problems, you just hand the keys to the neighborhood to a commercial developer and throw the poor folks out.

Someone who has lived in their home for 30 or 40 years and is on a fixed income is not going to be able to buy another home at today's prices, no matter how much compensation you give them. Even if they could take the payoff from the government and turn around and pay cash for something else, they would lose their Prop. 13 protections (in California) and would have to pay property tax rates many times what they paid before. This is the kind of stuff that riots are made of.

This is a bad, bad day for private property rights in America, and yet another reason why we've got to get conservative judges on the Supreme Court.

UPDATE: Rick Brady of Stones Cry Out, who incidentally is a land use and environmental planner by trade, points me to his interesting post on this court decision and the possible fallout in California. Nothing good is going to come out of this decision for private property owners.

UPDATE2: Glenn Reynolds makes some good points in his article at glennreynolds.com.