Any day now, Republicans in the California State Assembly will be given the opportunity to score an historic victory for private property rights. Governor Jerry Brown has proposed eliminating the state’s more than 400 redevelopment agencies, which have abused their eminent domain powers to terrorize Golden State property owners for decades. Now is the time for GOP Assemblymen and Senators to seize the occasion by casting off partisan concerns and focusing on doing what is right to end the abuse of public power for private gain.
California Republicans must stand up for Carlos Barragan, Jr., whose Community Youth Athletic Center uses boxing to train at-risk kids how to succeed in the ring, in school and in life. The National City Community Development Commission declared Barragan’s gym—along with almost 700 nearby properties—a “blight” on the community. If the blight label is allowed to remain, each of these properties could be the subject to eminent domain for private development for years to come.
The GOP in California must stand up for Ahmad Mesdaq, who was forced to close the doors of his upscale cigar store and café after San Diego redevelopment officials decided it stood in the way of their preferred upscale development. Mesdaq’s shop was impressive enough to be featured in Cigar Aficionado magazine and included former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger among its clientele, but it was ultimately destroyed and turned into a parking lot.
Republican legislators must stand up for the millions of Californians who live under the threat of eminent domain, including every single renter and all recent home buyers. Being secure in a home of one’s own is a fundamental part of the American Dream. This nation was built upon the ironclad promise of property rights, but that promise has been broken by the repeated abuse of eminent domain by capricious redevelopment agencies crusading against imaginary “blight”—a term once reserved for urban slums that California officials have now used to describe multi-million-dollar oceanfront homes and luxury golf courses.
Redevelopment agencies in California have a widespread and decades-long record of property rights abuse. Countless people have been threatened by redevelopment authorities seeking to take their homes and small businesses and transfer them to private developers. Most sell under the threat of eminent domain, resigned to the fact that “you can’t fight City Hall.” Because of the complexity of the law and the enormous costs involved, it is next to impossible for ordinary people to challenge these takings, leaving the victims without any legal recourse against the collusion between redevelopment agencies who take their property and the developers who profit from discounted land sold under the pressure of local authorities.
Rogue redevelopment agencies bent on subsidizing pie-in-the-sky real estate developments have twisted California’s law in order to give themselves the power to condemn and seize under the flimsiest of pretenses virtually any home, business, farm or church in the state. Governor Brown has given Republicans a way to help end that abuse and provide real protection for a fundamental right and long-standing plank on their party’s platform. Members of the Legislature should stand with the countless victims of eminent domain abuse by voting “yea” on this historic proposal.
Jason Orr is a communications associate with the Institute for Justice, which litigates nationwide against eminent domain abuse. For more information, visit www.ij.org.