Be Careful: Shirley Kressel and Marty Walz support this!!!

South End News
City Streetsby Shirley Kressel

On December 4, 2007, the State legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on bills that would allow eminent domain taking only for “public use,” i.e., schools, parks, libraries, roads, etc.The fifth amendment of the US constitution was written to say: “…nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Taking for other than public use was inconceivable. But the meaning of “public use” was transformed during the urban renewal era, when cities expanded the notion to include “public purpose” and then “public benefit.” Eliminating “blight” (i.e., demolishing poor neighborhoods) was itself considered a proper public purpose. Then, replacing these neighborhoods with more profitable uses and wealthier people became the “public purpose.” Redevelopment and increased tax growth are now considered sufficient “public benefit” to take people’s homes.The US Supreme Court’s 1954 Berman vs Parker urban renewal ruling legitimized the conception of eminent domain for economic development, expediting the widespread urban displacement of the 1960s and 1970s. The people victimized were invariably poor, black and/or immigrant. Former BRA urban design director Homer Russell once explained that real estate interests and politicians of the 1950’s, envying Europe’s war-ravaged cities, pursued urban renewal to get a clean slate for massive construction projects in America, to jump-start the post-war, post-depression economy. The bitter irony is that this use of eminent domain did not heal our cities. On the contrary, it destroyed thousands of small business, and laid to waste huge areas of valuable housing stock, creating the roots of the current housing shortage, impoverishing millions and depriving us of historic buildings that would now be worth billions of dollars. In his 1964 book, The Federal Bulldozer, economist Martin Anderson calculated the enormous waste of public subsidy money and loss of tax revenues by federal, state and local governments, as vast acreages of previously tax-paying urban land across the nation lay empty for years. Indeed, many acres still lie fallow in Boston’s renewal areas, needlessly leveled in the name of economic development. Herbert Gans’s book, The Urban Villagers, told the world about the destruction of Boston’s West End in 1958, to the profit of a politically connected developer. Archives of this rueful story are now in the West End Museum, housed in the last of the redevelopment buildings finally built in 1997 — 50 years later! Of 7500 residents evicted from that neighborhood by urban renewal — which originally required re-housing of every displaced person — about 25 have been able to get affordable units in the West End. Photos before demolition show architecture exactly like that of the historic North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and South End — some of the most valuable real estate in the country, and essential to our tourist economy.One of the most notorious urban-renewal fiascos was the 1981 Poletown decision, in which the Michigan Supreme Court allowed the City of Detroit to uproot 4200 people to make way for a General Motors plant. In the end, GM fell 3500 jobs short of its promise to create 6500 new jobs, displacing more people than it employed, and a sweetheart deal cost taxpayers over $300 million subsidies for GM. The Michigan Supreme Court overturned Poletown in August 2004 — just after the March 2004 Connecticut Supreme Court, relying on that precedent, upheld economic development takings in Kelo v. City of New London. Yet the US Supreme Court followed in the State’s footsteps on June 23, 2005.“Public purpose” and “public benefit” takings have continued and broadened, as local governments have come to claim all types of property on behalf of private businesses — to put the land to better economic use. Of course, there is always theoretically a “better” use for any property — but remember, the better user can simply buy it from the owner, not have it taken for him. There is no more evidence today than there was in 1964 that city-building by private-use eminent domain is more economically effective than by the workings of ordinary land markets. Note that Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market (the BRA’s “Exhibit A” proof of its indispensability) was not an urban renewal project, and no eminent domain was involved, as attested by Jane Thompson, one of the project’s initiators. Also, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (another cynically exploited poster-child of private-use eminent domain), a community land trust that got eminent domain power in a Ch. 121A affordable housing agreement to help stabilize a devastated neighborhood, in reality ended up simply negotiating agreements with most of the private landowners, enforcing its eminent domain power for only a couple of properties. The 121A expired and takings are no longer part of DSNI’s strategy.Nor does taking meet with standards of fairness on which this country prides itself. In eminent domain for private gain, the corporate powers have the advantage of money and political influence. Small property owners can rarely afford legal fees to protect their homes and businesses. If private-use eminent domain is not an effective economic tool, nor a moral social contract, why allow it?America boasts of its free-market capitalism and exports it worldwide. If developers or corporations want land, they can buy it at fair market value, as they’d want to sell their own property. Why should the government buy it for them forcibly, distorting the competitive land market and favoring some businesses over others?As to public nuisances and neglected properties, eminent domain is the wrong weapon; zoning and building code enforcement and tax foreclosure are the proper remedies. And if whole neighborhoods are in trouble, comprehensive city planning is needed to treat the underlying problems; that’s what urban renewal taught us. The Kelo decision didn’t change anything; it simply confirmed the status quo. But the US Supreme Court (probably sensing the potential for profound damage) explicitly encouraged state legislatures to enact their own protections. Rep. Martha Walz’s bill, House 1770, closes the “blight” loophole, and protects both private and public property, safeguarding City land from the rapacious BRA, the only urban renewal agency in America that takes City property (and without compensation). We should get H1770 passed now. And at the next Constitutional Convention, the legislature must enact an equivalent constitutional amendment to avoid future legislated exceptions