Kelo Takings

Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
--Madness

Kelo v. New London was a Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded the scope of government authority for forcibly taking real estate from private owners. Essentially, it legitimized government expropriation of eminent domain rationale for taking property for private--not public--development if it is deemed that the community at large would benefit from the development.

This can be viewed as another expression of greater good accounting.

One study estimates that a million homes have been taken since Kelo. Unfortunately, the precise reason for each taking was not measured in the investigation, although most of them are presumed to have been taken using eminent domain justification. Another limitation is that the study does not compare pre Kelo to post Kelo takings.

An important observation is that eminent domain rulings are biased toward the poor and blacks, whose households are being taken at about twice the rate of the general population.

Developer identifies some prime real estate currently occupied by low income people...developer uses the Kelo precedent to influence government to evict the occupants and score the land for its project...another mechanism for distributing wealth by force.