Posted on 10/23/2014 5:53:39 PM PDT by kindred
Indiana residents are fighting to save their homes as their local government weighs a sweeping plan to demolish them to make way for new development, in a case critics are calling a “poster child” for the abuse of so-called eminent domain powers. Charlestown, Ind., Mayor Bob Hall announced his plans earlier this year to demolish more than 350 homes in the city’s Pleasant Ridge neighborhood. The mayor contends the neighborhood is “blighted,” and therefore the city is eligible for state money to buy out the homeowners and tear down their houses. His office argues the houses, originally bought by the Army in 1940, were meant to be temporary. But the “temporary” houses remain very much occupied. And many residents are not interested in selling them, at least not for what the government might offer. According to the Institute for Justice, a national group that is aiding residents in their case, the state fund Hall wants to tap offers residents just $6,000 for their houses. “We’re not transients. We’re real people,” Ellen Keith, who has lived with her husband David in their Pleasant Ridge home for 36 years, told FoxNews.com. “These people are my real neighbors, and I love my neighbors. … My house is not for sale.” Hall first submitted a 17,000-page application for money from Indiana’s Blight Elimination Program in June of this year. The state’s decision was supposed to come out in July. But amid protests from residents, the mayor decided to put that decision on hold in early July, asking the state to defer the city’s application. Now residents will have to wait until November or December to find out if the city plans to go forward. The mayor’s office maintains that the destruction of these homes will be best for the city.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Hate to say it but the link below says that the Mayor is a Republican, last paragraph on the bottom.
Immaterial. Only salient as a rebuttal to kindred's incorrect assumption.
A mayor like that...R or D...needs to be ridden out of town on a rail. Or tarred and feathered.
The law requires that you bend over and take it like a good little slave.
Nobody in the US owns real property. You only rent it from the government via property taxes. Stop paying your taxes, and you lose your property. If the powers to be decide that they can make more money off of your property via redevelopment, your property will be confiscated, and sold to the highest bidder, with the full force of the government, and there is nothing you can do about it, short of armed rebellion.
“Hall first submitted a 17,000-page application for money from Indiana’s Blight Elimination Program in June of this year”
Only in government could an application have 17K pages. LOL
That should be “Kelo”.
“The comments following the article state the Mayor is a republican.”
Corporatist RINO.
Boner, the Ditch Turtle and Tokyo are all Rewpubwicanz.
Boner, the Ditch Turtle and Tokyo are all Rewpubwicanz.
Zillow shows the cheapest LOT in Charlestown, IN for sale at $10K. So $6K for a house seems ridiculous.
Boner, the Ditch Turtle and Tokyo are all Wepubwicanz.
Sounds like about 10% of the town (which is still growing..)
Difficult to tell by the pictures, but the houses seem to be in overall fair condition, with some in seemingly excellent condition. Blight is in the eye of the beholder, and blight is seen best by those that profit from eliminating it with somebody else’s money.
A developer wants the properties right? The community is responsible for the sewerage, the water supply, utilities, etc. right?
They always never make it known the taxpayer in the community is responsible for the utilities. The people get displaced without appropriate compensation, the taxpayer gets ripped off, and the developer rides off into the sunset with cash in pocket having sold to a holding company. The mayor retires to his gated community, and is forgotten, and the taxpayer continues to pay for all the maintenance of the utilities forever, and ever.
Looks like the potential eminent domain abuse is driving down property values in the neighborhood (look at the “Zestimate” vs. the asking price): http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/335-Clark-Rd-Charlestown-IN-47111/53239759_zpid/
Looks like a “mixed bag” type of neighborhood...most decent and some more “derelict”...
After some Google Street View...on the worse side:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4450836,-85.6725381,3a,75y,95.73h,77.93t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s3cKICg-DuQj9bhrWEBIhCg!2e0
On the best side:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4446459,-85.6751205,3a,75y,278.69h,82.48t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sa_e8YqKt4bBS8urJhqp84A!2e0
All your houses are belong to us.
Perhaps the mayor would consider it fair play to see a bulldozer go through his house?
Just saying.....
But that is New London CT, it is such a dump even the crooks all moved to Groton.
I’d like to see them sell his house for 6 grand. Then let him live off of it.
Deuteronomy 27:17
17 ‘Cursed is anyone who steals property from a neighbor by moving a boundary marker.’
And all the people will reply, ‘Amen.’
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