If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The Florida Town of Riviera Beach is one of the poorest in Florida. This town of 19,000 sits right across the inlet from Palm Beach, and will most likely be completely reinvented over the next few years. The Supreme Courts allowance of the use of eminent domain to claim land just for economic development. One of the outgrowths of this will be a reclamation of land that is in low income areas if the local community feel it can improve the tax base.

The Washington Times reports:

 ”This is a community that’s in dire need of jobs, which has a median income of less than $19,000 a year,” said Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown.
    He defends the use of eminent domain by saying the city is “using tools that have been available to governments for years to bring communities like ours out of the economic doldrums and the trauma centers.”
    Mr. Brown said Riviera Beach is doing what the city of New London, Conn., is trying to do and what the U.S. Supreme Court said is proper in its ruling June 23 in Kelo v. City of New London. That decision upheld the right of government to seize private properties for use by private developers for projects designed to generate jobs and increase the tax base.
    ”Now eminent domain is affecting people who never had to deal with it before and who have political connections,” Mr. Brown said. “But if we don’t use this power, cities will die.”
    Jacqui Loriol insists she and her husband will fight the loss of their 80-year-old home in Riviera Beach.
    ”This is a very [racially] mixed area that’s also very stable,” she said. “But no one seems to care … Riviera Beach needs economic redevelopment. But there’s got to be another way.”
    In the Kelo ruling, a divided Supreme Court held that private development offering jobs and increased tax revenues constituted a public use of property, but the court held that state legislatures can draft eminent-domain statutes to their satisfaction.
    Dana Berliner, senior lawyer with the Institute for Justice, which represented homeowners in the Kelo case, said “pie in the sky” expectations like those expressed by Mr. Brown are routine in all these cases.
    ”They always think economic redevelopment will bring more joy than what is there now,” she said. “Once someone can be replaced so something more expensive can go where they were, every home and business in the country is subject to taking by someone else.”
    Last week, the Riviera Beach City Council tapped the New Jersey-based Viking Inlet Harbor Properties LLC to oversee the mammoth 400-acre redevelopment project.
    ”More than 2,000 homes could be eligible for confiscation,” said H. Adams Weaver, a local lawyer who is assisting protesting homeowners.

This use of eminent domain will become more and more common as developers and local officials feel that improving the tax base will come at the expense of local poor residents.

Related posts:

1. Riviera Beach a case of “Reverse Robin Hood” ?
2. Ohio Supreme Court Stops Worst of Eminent Domain Abuse
3. Boynton Beach Foiled in Eminent Domain Land Grab by Governor Bush
4. California Eminent Domain Battle Looms
5. Missouri Eminent Domain Bill A Landmark In the Eminent Domain Battle