Is Home Still One's Castle?

2 March 2005



Connecticut Home Owners' Property Rights Attacked

One of the prime causes of the American Revolution was the desire of British subjects in America to enjoy the land they had acquired (either legally or illegally) and other property without George III and his ministers getting in the way. And it has become a pillar of faith that capitalism relies on a solid body of law governing property rights. So, the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London this term will be of huge importance. The city wants to use "eminent domain" to take the homes of certain residents so that a private non-profit group can build a conference center, hotels, offices and condominia on it. Surely, this is plain wrong.

Eminent domain is a practical legal concept dating back to feudal times. It essentially circumscribes property rights of the individual in order to provide certain amenities for the common good. Historically in America, eminent domain (also known as "condemnation") has been used by local and state governments as well as the feds to provide things like roads, railroads, schools and such. It is tacitly enshrined in the Fifth Amendment which says in part "nor shall property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

What is happening in New London is not the government taking someone's property by force (even with compensation) but rather, it is being forcibly sold to private developers (non-profit, though they may be) with the city acting as an intermediary. Students of Russian business and politics will see the parallel with the forced sale of Yukos for "tax arrears." In both cases, the government is merely transferring title from one group of private citizens to another.

City officials make a rather tortured case that the area is economically depressed and this will help the local economy, thus boosting tax revenues, thus meeting the requirement of public benefit. They note that the area has been zoned for industrial use since 1929 despite the presence of private homes at the time, and since. City Attorney Thomas Londregan told CNN, "This area had a junkyard, which had to be cleaned up at great expense. They had oil tanks, commercial big storage tanks. There is a railroad down there." He also pointed out that the city has been classified by the state as a distressed municipality that lost 18,000 jobs when the naval base closed.

Suzzette and Tim Kelo bought their house in this blue-collar area for $50,000, a pink two-bedroom Victorian (no accounting for taste) overlooking Connecticut's Thames River and Long Island Sound. She said in the same CNN story, "It was like I'd been here all my life." She didn't want to sell at all, oil tanks and railroad notwithstanding.

The Institute for Justice, which is helping the Kelos and six of their neighbors, did some research and found about 10,000 cases where local government transferred title forcibly between private parties from 1998 to 2002. Six states have upheld the practice. The Connecticut State Supreme Court held that economic development outweighed property rights in this case. If the US Supremes agree, American property rights will suffer a heavy blow.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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