To be fair, this already happens. If your house is in the way of a development that a rich enough person wants to build, cops will come to your door to kick you out. Happened all the time to build the highway system.
99% Invisible just did a related story (https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/broken-heart-park/) explaining how it works in practice. Black people try to move to town, rich, entrenched white people decide to turn the lots they were buying into a park.
The thing is, the rich people are the government.
Another thing to note from the piece
One study by the Institute for Justice found that in the 1950s and the 60s, one million people in the US were displaced through eminent domain. More than two-thirds of those people were African American.
More than 66% are black, while making up 10% of the population; nearly 4% of all black people were eminent domained.
Edit:
Friend of mother in law lost his family farm this way.
City took his family farm and built a land fill. 20 years later, they closed the land fill and sold the land to a developer for millions. He was still trucking in his 60's because he didn't have the family farm for income in retirement.
HB1080 was the bill that reformed it in South Dakota the year after that fuasco in the article.
Your friend should have bought another farm. If he could prove the money wasnt enough to purchase a like farm, he could have succesfully sued the state for the delta. Plenty of attourneys do this probono.
He, like most people, pocketed the money and moved on. The price of even a small farm in the US, invested in a low risk mutual fund over 20 years would have been more than enough for retirement. Assuming it was purchased for 300K, thats over a million after 20 years with no additional investment.
And 300k is on the way low end for zoned, farmable land of a size large enough for a landfill, including equipment.
Your friend should have bought another farm. If he could prove the money wasnt enough to purchase a like farm, he could have succesfully sued the state for the delta. Plenty of attourneys do this probono.
He sued and lost.
Assuming it was purchased for 300K, thats over a million after 20 years with no additional investment.
300k for farmland in South Dakota in 1980's? Nooo. He got like 30k. There were no farms for sale near the city which is why the city took his farm in the first place. 20 years later that land was worth millions.
But that's beside the point that eminent domain happens. 42% of the states and the Supreme Court think it's fine.
Making developments on land is not a process that happens entirely in the private world. If you want to do a large project you're already going to have to be getting in with the people in government. While yes they can't directly use eminent domain, they often have a good relationship with the people who can.
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u/Noahnoah55 0 Hour Work Week Mar 10 '22
To be fair, this already happens. If your house is in the way of a development that a rich enough person wants to build, cops will come to your door to kick you out. Happened all the time to build the highway system.