BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer
A nonprofit law firm has begun a campaign to help homeowners like those in Long Branch protect their homes from being taken for private redevelopment projects.
The Institute for Justice (IJ), Washington, D.C., began its $3 million national Hands Off My Home campaign on June 29, and an IJ attorney said this is just the beginning of the fight for property rights.
“This [campaign] is going to be the primary method used to fight back against eminent domain abuse,” Scott Bullock, senior attorney with IJ, said this week.
The firm specializes in the protection of private property rights when the process of eminent domain is executed for nonpublic uses.
Bullock and senior IJ attorney Dana Berliner represented Suzette Kelo, a homeowner along the New London, Conn., waterfront where the New London Development Corp., a private developer, plans to take Kelo’s property and 15 others in the neighborhood, before the Supreme Court last month.
Two weeks ago, the court ruled 5-4 in favor New London.
“Americans are furious about the Supreme Court decision,” Bullock said.
IJ and an offshoot, the Castle Coalition, a nationwide network of citizen activists formed to stop the abuse of eminent domain in their communities, started the Hands Off My Home campaign to give ordinary citizens the means to protect their homes from government-forced taking for private development, according to an IJ press release.
One group of Long Branch residents has been fighting for their property rights for the past two years.
“My home is a part of me, a part of my family, and we are part of a community,” Denise Hoagland, a core member of the MTOTSA (Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace, Seaview Avenue) group, said.
MTOTSA is composed of about 26 property owners who reside in one of the city’s six redevelopment zones.
Hoagland’s property, along with the 35 other properties located in her three-street neighborhood, has been designated the Beachfront North, Phase II redevelopment zone.
Plans call for the neighborhood to be bulldozed and replaced with upscale condominiums and townhouses by a private developer.
“Owning a home is the American dream, and to have it forcibly taken away to benefit someone else is against all of the principles of what being an American is about,” Hoagland said.
As part of the Hands Off My Home campaign, IJ and the Castle Coalition have immediate plans to:
• Pursue state-level litigation to enforce “public use” limitations found in every state constitution;
• Issue a formal pledge for governors in each state to sign, promising to oppose efforts in their state to use the governmental power of eminent domain for private development, and to support legislation and other efforts to ensure the citizens of their state are safe from eminent domain for the purpose of private development;
• Support citizen activists nationwide who are urging their state and local officials to set stricter standards for the use of eminent domain;
• Establish a Castle Coalition presence in every state so ordinary citizens will be poised to mobilize the minute eminent domain is abused for private ends; and
• Host a conference this month in Washington, D.C., to train activists in fighting unjust takings.
“The floodgates to eminent domain abuse are already opening in the wake of the Supreme Court’s dreadful Kelo decision,” Bullock said.
“The Hands Off My Home campaign will empower ordinary Americans to fight back against eminent domain abuse and to stop this un-American alliance between tax-hungry politicians and land hungry developers,” Bullock said.
“The American people are furious about this decision, but they can do something about it,” Berliner said.
“In this next year, the Castle Coalition will encourage and coordinate grassroots efforts to end eminent domain abuse in states and cities. At the same time, IJ will ask state courts to enforce their state constitutional limits in the use of eminent domain for private development,” Berliner said.
“And,” she added, “the next time we get to the Supreme Court, it will overturn the Kelo precedent.”
For more information on the campaign, visit www.ij.org.