You have to wonder about taking ones house without your approval to build a massive development by force. Riviera Beach government is in the process of relocating 6,000 residents to develop a 400 acre site. Yes they will be paid, but not to the level they could command on the open market. So essentially Eminent Domain is being used to take their property by the point of a gun.

The Palm Beach Post has a looked at the study that determined Urban Blight and found that there are some serious inconsistencies with the methodology.

The city’s blight study reported that the north side of a 10th Street block was vacant. It wasn’t. Four- and five-year-old homes dotted the street.

• Where some homes had double lots, the second lot was listed as vacant, inflating the number of unused properties.

• Homes in good condition were classified as dilapidated and beyond repair.

• Hundreds of mobile homes, including some that later weathered Hurricanes Frances, Jeanne and Wilma, automatically were classified as blighted due to undocumented safety problems or criticism such as “a tendency to blow over in storms.”

• There were no findings of high crime rates or fires, a key justification of blight. City computers were being tweaked to accommodate a new system, according to the city’s study, and so the numbers could not be retrieved.

• Buildings in good shape were declared “functionally obsolete,” defined generally as a structure which, if torn down, could be replaced with something that generated more money.

Boston Globe

The goal, Mayor Michael D. Brown said during a public meeting in September, is to ”forever change the landscape” in this municipality of about 32,500. The $1 billion plan, local leaders have said, should generate jobs and haul Riviera Beach’s economy out of the doldrums.

Opponents, however, call the plan a government-sanctioned land grab that benefits private developers and the wealthy.

”What they mean is that the view I have is too good for me and should go to some millionaire,” said Martha Babson, 60, a house painter who lives near the Intracoastal Waterway.

”This is a reverse Robin Hood,” said state Representative Ronald L. Greenstein, meaning the poor in Riviera Beach would be robbed to benefit the rich.

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