Add this to the ever growing pile of tragically enacted travesties that the Kelo decision is continuing to wreck upon us.
Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog: More on Property Rights
Bizzy Blog has a property rights update that includes news about a New Jersey case that shows how topsy-turvy government policies can be.
In this case, rather than take property and transfer it to another entity for a more lucrative economic purpose, the government reversed the equation, taking an $833,000 home and farmland to build low- and moderate-income housing. Then it tried to stiff the family, paying them substantially less than fair market value for the property.
I just feel more dismal than ever about the outcome of this horrible injustice that the Supreme Court has imposed upon this nation.
Where is the push for legislation to control the beast of government supported greed?
Where are the voices?
Bizzy Blog fills in the picture:
::quoted from elsewhere::
Perhaps signaling a reaction against the appalling Kelo decision, the southern New Jersey town of Mount Laurel is back in the news again, this time with a new ruling that offers a sliver of comfort to defenders of property rights.Last month, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that at least the town couldn’t gyp a property owner out of the true value of his holding, which had been seized to meet the town’s low-income housing quota. In Mount Laurel Township v. Stanley, the court held that the township must pay the value of the Stanley family’s 10-acre site at the time it was actually condemned, not the value five years earlier when it was designated for a “fair-share†development site. That way, at least, officials can’t avail themselves of a cheap option on someone’s property by announcing an intention to condemn it at some point in the future.
The Stanley family will still lose their property, but they will get the $833,000 it was worth in May 2002, rather than its $650,000 value in December 1997, before a five-year rise in real estate values. It’s a small victory but any victory against the assault on property rights is worth noting. ::quoted::
I’m less than impressed, in that the Stanleys should never have been forced to give up their property in the first place…
Kelo was a dark decision and a black day for Americans. The storm clouds of this are just now appearing upon the horizon. This redistribution of wealth far exceeds anything we could have done short of adopting an outright Communist system.