Eminent domain means your home can be their castle
[...] the Legislature is working to expand rules to allow local officials to green-light pet projects more likely to enrich powerful interests than benefit the communities the policy is supposed to serve.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “economic development” constituted “public use” in its infamous Kelo decision, which allowed governments to seize private property for private development.
(The state or local government derives its power to take private property for public use in return for just compensation from the right of eminent domain.) The Kelo ruling emboldened cities like Oakland to seize private property at bargain prices to accommodate tony private development.
Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.
Oakland proved O’Connor right by seizing two properties — Revelli Tires and Autohouse — to make way for private development.
Ravelli Tires and Autohouse had a form of blight — their owners didn’t have the political clout to fight back.
In effect, AB2492 would allow officials to find that an area is blighted if, for example, the median income there is less than 80 percent of the median income either “statewide, countywide or citywide.”
The “or” part, says Marko Mlikotin of the California Alliance to Protect Private Property Rights, would allow local officials to “cherry-pick the data,” and let affluent communities parade as needy.
[...] I suspect Mlikotin is right when he posits Brown’s move on redevelopment “really was about money, not some new found religion in private property rights.”
There was little money to be made by people who would abuse eminent domain during the economic (downturn) that followed Kelo and the financial crisis, but in the past few years there is again economic incentive for government and politically favored developers to collude to grab land they can’t get in a free market.
The cottage was moved, however, and now serves as a monument to all those who fight eminent domain abuses.