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Originally posted by kddani
Pretty basic example of eminent domain. The cities do have to compensate them for their property, it's not like they're just taking it.
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That is simply the bone they throw. Never have I seen a family appropriately compensated for their loss. This has been occurring in East Baltimore as the Johns Hopkins complex sucks up every piece of land around it. I know several communities where families who have owned their home for generations have been stripped of their property, paid considerably less that what it really was worth and forced to move. Sadly most of the folks have been retired working class folks on fixed incomes who really cannot afford to buy new in this current housing market. The companies would rather get the city to help them boot these folks than have to buy them out for a more true price.
Baltimore has a very sad history of this. In West Baltimore we have the infamous "highway to nowhere" which should have connected rt 70 to downtown. The city took blocks and blocks of homes from low income people of color but eventually abandoned the project because they would have had to disturb a park. That was far more of a concern that the hundreds of people they displaced. Oh no, not the trees and the birds, can't move them.
Eminent domain sounds reasonable on paper or in a case book but is a really ugly thing in reality.