Police State USACHARLESTOWN, IN — A town is working to “demolish a working-class neighborhood” by seizing 354 homes and passing the land off to a private commercial developer. Using federal dollars and the highly-abused power of eminent domain, the city intends to evict multitudes of families to make way for economic progress.
The community under fire is called “Pleasant Ridge.” It contains hundreds of small homes that were built during World War II as military housing. Today the homes are privately-owned and contain working-class and poor families, many of which have owned their homes for decades.
The City of Charlestown intends to demolish the community in order to allow new commercial and residential real estate to be built in its place — privately-owned real estate. The city declared its intentions in June 2014, when it applied to the state for permission to use eminent domain and for $5.3 million in “Hardest Hit Funds,” a federal grant program administered through Indiana’s Blight Elimination Program (BEP). The land grab might not have been economically feasible if not for being directly subsidized and incentivized by the federal government.
Protests against the looming seizure have persisted for months, and Pleasant Ridge formed its own neighborhood association this summer to coordinate opposition. The government’s decision on the project is supposed to be made in November or December.
The perilous power of eminent domain has been in use for as long as governments have existed, but it was traditionally (and constitutionally) constrained to projects involving “public use” of the land. These might have included roads or government facilities.
In 2005, however, the U.S. Supreme Court egregiously ruled that it was “constitutional” for a city to seize homes for the benefit of private developers (see: Kelo v. City of New London). The benefits of “economic development” have been henceforth recognized to trump private property rights in the USA. In other words, people can be involuntarily kicked off land they own free-and-clear, if government bureaucrats believe another private party could use it to bring in more tax revenue for the city.
The City of Charlestown has been further justifying its authoritarian maneuver by claiming that the Pleasant Ridge community is “blighted” and full of drugs, crime, and “transients.” Officials claim building retail stores and new homes would be an improvement to Charlestown.
Residents contest these allegations, striking blows at the city’s credibility. And, even if the claims were found to contain shades of truth, they would not morally excuse the wholesale violation of any family’s right to be secure in their own private property.
“I’ve never had any trouble in this neighborhood, not one problem,” said resident Ellen Keith, who has lived in the community since 1968 and raised a family there. “The mayor wants to say that we have a crime and drug problem. … I guess because we’re a poor neighborhood, they want to label it like that.”
“We’re not transients. We’re real people,” Mrs. Keith continued. “These people are my real neighbors, and I love my neighbors. … My house is not for sale.”
The use of eminent domain comes with compensation to the evicted landowners. As the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states, “No person shall be… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
The City of Charlestown has proclaimed that a paltry sum of $6,000 per home is the amount of “just compensation” that will be administered to the Pleasant Ridge refugees if the land grab takes place.
The nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice (IJ) has taken up the cause of Pleasant Ridge, leading the charge to defend the private property rights of the community.
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/charlestown-indiana-eminent-domain/
If you can get past the initial outrage of the town even attempting this tyranny, consider what they’re paying the victims of this “eminent domain” land grab; $6000 per home?
What are these people supposed to do with $6000? You can’t even move into a decent car for that, so basically, the town is just tossing these people into the street because some rich Jew wants their land.
“…Pleasant Ridge formed its own neighborhood association this summer to coordinate opposition.”
Hopefully it will be a heavily armed opposition that will put an end to this BS once and for all. They should dig in, and fight for their homes while they can, because they’re all gong to wind up living in storm drains if they don’t.
“….demolish the community in order to allow new commercial and residential real estate to be built in its place…”
How well is “new commercial and residential real estate” doing elsewhere? This move doesn’t even make fiscal sense for the town, who would be better off keeping the taxpayers. Sounds to me like they just want to kick a bunch of poor people out of the town, and I’ll bet that most of them are black.
Absolutely! I don’t know about Indiana but this “stealing land for commercial purposes” would make no sense in, say, a state like New York or New Jersey that has millions of acres of land on which vacant shopping centers and office buildings are located!
Almost 30 years ago in my neck of the woods (Big Bend area of Texas) a local city kicked a landowner off a relatively small plot of land for the purposes of some public arena deal…and the land is STILL vacant! Nothing on it but a parking lot!
This is sheer tyranny at its finest. That entire neighbor better arm up and train immediately if they hope to save their homes. When the government comes to take away everything you have, you don’t have anything left to lose except your life. It’s far better to die defending what is yours than to slowly die of starvation and disease living in a storm drain.
When the author said governments have been doing this since the beginning he or she is correct: eminent domain has been around forever. This is how New York’s highways came about; for instance in the early 1900s the various Long Island counties wanted highways put in, so they needed land, right? So when they put in the Long Island Expressway, they did it in a roundabout way…they kicked the small farmer, small landowner, and the various “little people” at the time off their land so the elites at the time, such as the Roosevelts and other large landowners, who had “protested” giving up one acre of their landed estates (that is, they bribed the officials), didn’t have to. From a book called “The Power Brokers,” written in the early 70s.
In fact the only good reason for forming an HOA or POA is precisely why these folks formed one: to stop eminent domain, or Agenda 21. It is a lot harder to steal land from an HOA/POA than it is from a community that is not “associated” if you know what I mean: government vs. quasi-government is a better fighting tool than government vs. individuals who are often too poor or powerless to fight back.
Very good point there DL. 😉
I wonder if that land developer will be putting in brand new houses?
. . .
Do a Bundy on em’!
Exactly St. Bernardnot