Government-Approved Property Theft: "They Paved (The Artist's Studio) And Put Up A Parking Lot"
In Philadelphia, real life is starting to echo that part about paving and parking lots in Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi".
Institute for Justice's Nick Sibilla writes at Forbes.com that Philadelphia wants to call "eminent domain" (blandly evil words meaning "forcibly take a person's property") on an artist's studio and turn it into a parking lot and supermarket:
James Dupree has been celebrated around the world for his art. But now he is being condemned by the city of Philadelphia--literally....A native son of Philadelphia, his studio is just blocks away from his childhood home in the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia. After eight years of renovations and sweat equity, Dupree's studio has become a part of the community. Dupree has hosted and taught art classes at his place and has plans to start a mentorship program to educate inner-city youth on entrepreneurship and aesthetic appreciation. Visitors can rent part of the studio out on Airbnb.
But the city of Philadelphia has other plans for his property. In November 2012, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) was authorized to acquire 17 properties to build a supermarket in Mantua. According to the redevelopment plans, the PRA wants to bulldoze Dupree's studio to make room for the privately-owned grocery store and its parking lot. No tenant has been identified yet, but the supermarket project has received $2.75 million in state subsidies.
In an egregious lowball, the city offered Dupree $600,000, which is less than a third of the asking price for his studio. Even worse, it was a drive-by appraisal--"they didn't even come into the building," Dupree said in an interview.
Later on, two appraisers from the city actually entered his studio. But this time, the PRA reportedly offered him just $40,000 more. That figure is supposed to compensate Dupree for all the extensive renovations he's made and the more than 5,000 pieces of art in his studio. These works represent a lifetime of painting, spanning four decades.
...Yet rather than respect his right to property, according to Dupree, "they would rather steal it:"
"These eminent domain laws have been changed where they can go into these communities, seize their property, relocate the tenants for next to nothing, and then sell that land back to a private developer for a profit, under the guise of 'the good of the community.' I find this totally un-American."
Incredibly, his studio was seized just four days before an eminent domain loophole was closed.
...Dupree is determined to keep fighting, both in and out of court. To raise awareness, he's partnering with the Institute for Justice and building coalitions to press the city to return his deed. In one month, a petition on change.org has already garnered almost 2,000 signatures.
"Just give me my deed back," Dupree remarked. "I want to decide when and if I sell my property, on my terms."
This is an egregious violation of his rights, and we all need to stand up against these and oother violations of our civil liberties. Because it's the right thing to do, and because every violation makes the next one more possible. And because we could be next.
Going back to "Big Yellow Taxi," in it, Joni Mitchell has some words that pertain to our civil liberties, of which property rights are an essential one:
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
> Dupree's studio has become a part of the
> community.
The lowest imaginable standard.
Listen, a convincing argument can be made that the most destructive word in late-20th urban language is "redevelopment."
But money doesn't fuck around... Not in your wallet and not in mine. "Pieces of art" are worth what someone will pay for them yesterday, and in this case, who knows. "That figure" isn't "supposed to compensate Dupree" for dick... It represents what the place means to someone today.
The author of the bid may have a despicable fist's-worth of government intimidation underwriting the offer.
But unicorns under rainbows can never the be the measure of wealth. There are no exceptions.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 2:36 AM
Listen, I hear, ya, OK? I remember how APPALLED I was at Kelo. (Seriously, I phoned my mother for a comforting voice... In my 45th year!)
And I remember how, short days later, I was stunned to learn that it was LEFT of the bench that had squandered my liberty.
They are not to be forgiven. No.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 2:41 AM
With ninja sensitivity to tongues, Big Mac tags 2nd most destructive word in urban language.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 2:45 AM
If you were disgusted by Kelo, that can only be for two reasons: 1) you don't know the Constitution; and 2) you didn't read the ruling. Kelo vs. the City of New London was fairly decided.
Patrick at December 8, 2013 6:56 AM
Feel free to support that, Patrick.
Amy Alkon at December 8, 2013 8:18 AM
And Crid, the fact that it's his property should be enough. I didn't write the piece. I think, though, that appealing to people through the arguments the IJ guy made, helps people who don't realize how essential it is to protect property rights.
Amy Alkon at December 8, 2013 8:19 AM
Of course he COULD retaliate. Claim he has converted to Islam, and that the studio is ALSO a conceptual Mosque. . .
(evil grin)
Keith Glass at December 8, 2013 8:35 AM
Let me force you to sell your family's property and move after three generations so I can put up a mall. Then is it fair? Yes the monetary value may compensated, but the intrinsic family value is a different appraisal.
Jim P. at December 8, 2013 9:10 AM
The Constitution states that if property is taken for Public Use that just compensation must be provided.
I submit that if the government can turn around and sell that property at a profit then the compensation was in no way just. This is a bare minimum.
Now, there may be cases where eminent domain is legitimate. The folk who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights certainly thought so. (An illustrative example might be that a fortification might need to be situated on a particular piece of land to defend a mountain pass with other locations leading to a weaker defense risking everybody because one stubborn old coot won't sell that land.) However selling that land to private developers on the excuse of getting more taxes down the road is not one of them. The courts have allowed that. Well so much the worse for the courts.
David L. Burkhead at December 8, 2013 9:24 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/12/08/government-appr.html#comment-4101487">comment from Jim P.Well-put, Jim P., about the extrinsic value. I live in a termite-eaten shack. Part of what I love about where I live is the community and its personality. That can't be valued by an outsider in monetary terms.
Amy Alkon at December 8, 2013 10:11 AM
> That can't be valued by an outsider in
> monetary terms.
Says you. I mean, so what? It's Real Estate.
Is a buyer supposed to compensate you for things "that can't be valued by an outsider in monetary terms" through some other unit of value? If the 18"-square area next to your coffee table is just sopping with meaning "that can't be monetary," would you accept a bunch of sentimental stories from your buyer about her years in the Girl Scouts as fair payment? Or is there some other coin for preciousness, the fluctuating valuations of which are listed in the Wall Street Journal?
I doubt it. I think you & Dupree want money for your emotional responses... And you expect to be trusted about which zones are super-darling and which are just linoleum.
But that's not how it's done. Throughout the world, taxes and other valuations are calculated through two brutal tangibles: Location and square footage.
Listen, this is how America's economy has been crippled in the last few decades. Government has added thickets of regulation to convince consumers that their goopiest, tawdriest feelings about home & hearth can be codified into law... While simultaneously using these obfuscations to sustain their crony business partners. And health care has become the focus of so much sanctimony that our President, like our old commenter Brian, thinks no one should have to pay for it.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 12:05 PM
"Intrinsic family value" = fairy dust.
(Poof!)
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 12:07 PM
I'm sort of with Patrick on the Kelo decision; Yes, it does suck that some governments can do what they do with eminent domain.
But, I also think the Supreme Court decided it fairly. The problem is with the state and local laws governing eminent domain. The way I see it, the Supreme Court basically said that the states need to tighten their state laws to avoid such crap. Okay, those are MY words, not the court's; but, that is how I saw it. Not every state or every local jurisdiction will allow a Kelo type situation. Some will.
Further, I think, the voting public, the local and state politicians dropped the ball after the Kelo decision. That was a perfect opportunity for folks to do something about it. And nothing happened - a lot of talk - but no action.
Yes, Kelo and other such cases are unfair - but, that is the way the laws are written. Those local and state laws are what need to be changed.
Charles at December 8, 2013 12:08 PM
OK, there's an undercurrent here. I recently watched this TV show about Geffen, which is basically a flattering-parts-only autobiography. It's nonetheless fascinating for a boomer-generation viewer.
And when you watch it, you're reminded how ludicrous Joni Mitchell was... Just a mewling, tuneless mess.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 12:10 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/12/08/government-appr.html#comment-4101719">comment from Crid [CridComment at Gmail]You can choose to not sell because of intrinsic value. The point is that it should be your right, save for the most extenuating circumstances (like the world will end if the government doesn't build a railway through your living room).
Amy Alkon at December 8, 2013 12:34 PM
Sure. There are righteous condemnations by eminent domain and there are bogus ones. And in typical realty, there are good values and less-good.
But the emotional frippery of the seller's interior does not and should not mean anything to the marketplace.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 2:10 PM
No. Because my family has owned it since 1921, and we want to raise the next generations here.
Oh you want to build a straight line chunk of highway between Dallas and San Angelo? Will you build an overpass/underpass so I can get from one side to the other? Yes, sure I'll sell you a chunk for $80K.
Oh, you want to me and my neighbors to move after three generations because you want a mall I won't shop at to be here? How about $3M per acre. Oh, that is too high? How about $5M per acre then? You don't want to pay that much? Well when you come back back with $5M per acre, we might be able to talk. I'm being ridiculous> No, I'm not. I value this property that much that I don't want to sell it. I want my kids to get it from me.
Oh, you're a business backed by the government -- then it is $10M per acre. The government is going to only pay me $60K per acre and then sell it to you at $100K. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
------------------------------------
The failure of everyone that says Kelo was right is that the preamble to the Declaration of Independence includes the sentence:
There was an actual argument of the use of pursuit of Happiness actually meant property or estate. Consider the U.S. Constitution the DNA of the country and the Declaration as the heart of the country.
And even going with a Constitution only view, the federal and state governments are only supposed to be exercising decisions as we have granted rights to them. They should not be taking from me, you or anyone else to sell it to some third party.
Jim P. at December 8, 2013 3:18 PM
> No.
DONE, Buttercup. Who cares about your family? Who's asking?
> Oh you want to build a straight line chunk of
> highway
On some level, you understand that government is the topic, while Joni Mitchell is not.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 8, 2013 6:43 PM
This is another wholly shocking case where I'm on Crid's side, even absent my total disgust at Patrick's unquestioning acceptance of authority in so many cases.
In practice, government may be the master of the people – and that might be acceptable to Patrick - but in the Republic the people are the master of the government.
You would never accept a government decision in my field of work without being shown that it was for the greater public good.
What the Kelo case really did was show that government has the final say on where and how you can live. You, Patrick, and everyone who thinks like you can be displaced from your home, ancestral or not, so the government can get more tax money from putting in a convenience store.
Congratulations. You have sold your birthright to the republic, for which you apparently sit.
Radwaste at December 8, 2013 8:24 PM
"But, I also think the Supreme Court decided it fairly."
Eminent domain exists so that property can be taken as needed for public use. Selling it back to a developer is not a public use. It should have been an open and shut case, something that the Court should have decided 9-0 in about ten minutes.
And yeah, even by Joni Mitchell's standards, that's a sappy song.
Cousin Dave at December 9, 2013 6:42 AM
> But, I also think the Supreme Court decided
> it fairly.
> but, that is the way the laws are written.
When people start off a sentence or a phrase with "but" and a comma (a conjunction and coughing fit), they give the impression of being hillbillies who don't read a lot of books.
(Amy does it a lot.)
Greater confusion's foreshadowed as the question is soon begged: To mumble 'But that's the law' isn't insight. Dude, that's the point. We all agree that people holding irresistible force do horrible things.
A slim but perceptible majority of Amy's readers has come to recognize that government authority has become a crippling force in public affairs. Almost each topic she offers is a new demonstration.
And this particular post is a twofer!* [1.] Government players are obviously corrupt. [2.] Their power is granted by timid, dreamy commonfolk, who think government should be empowered to recognize the magical twinkle of fairy dust when pricing real estate, even in seizure. Our problem is within.
We're making progress here. You shouldn't fuck it up by trying to take in the big picture without a lens.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 9, 2013 11:39 AM
Kelo was an abomination, allowing eminent domain for private use, and private profit + taxes. How is this not inherently corrupt? Perhaps the owners had their own plan to profit from their property down the line. How can their profit potential be stolen from them to line someone else's private pockets? After all, this only happens where the profit to be made by the private developer exceeds the cost of buying out the owner, right?
Please direct all complaints to the Central Planning Commissar ...
Jay R at December 9, 2013 2:22 PM
Also, I'm really starting to love the concept of "intrinsic family value"!
It's psychedelic! It's jujitsu with a blowjob in a thunderstorm over a car crash during a time warp at Solstice on a bank holiday under a comet!
'Cause I'm thinking if the value is intrinsic, the family history is irrelevant.
But if the family is where the action is, there's nothing intrinsic about it... You'd have to be a member of the family to understand.
We already knew that, which is why buyers don't pay more money for a house where your daughter scraped her knee on the driveway during her first bike ride, or where your Aunt Gertrude got the shock of her life at the dinner table two days after her 80th birthday, when she learned that she was adopted.
It's a like fragrant blocks of granite.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 9, 2013 2:58 PM
We 'bout done here? OK.
There is one, and only one, forgiveable Joni Mitchell song... 1974's "Help Me."
[1.] Mitchell deserves sincere props in at least one respect: She gave comfort, encouragement and work to some brilliant guys, including perhaps the last analog player in history to change the world's expecations for an instrument.
[2.] "Help Me" is handsomely brief. Her witless warbles dont really have time to scratch deeply.
[3.] Brisk, sturdy instrumentation throughout, including lively drumming by John Guerin, who worked with everyone who ever lived, and whose skills and sincerity ennobled Zappa's Hot Rats, perhaps the finest instrumental record of the Rock & Roll era.
[4.] It was released in 1974. For young minds of that moment, it will always be the cheering sound of a shitty President sent to the feted bowels of ignominy.
[5.] The guitar modulations at the end are stardust. They're magnificent. Every now and then, industrial America knocks it out of the park and straight to heaven. It happened (once) to Joni Mitchell.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 9, 2013 3:55 PM
OK, there is another thing to admire about Mitchell, even though she's Canadian. She begat the composition of this headline.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 9, 2013 5:34 PM
Also, fetid ( fet·id /ˈfetid/) not feted (fête fāt,fet/ verb, past tense: fêted).
I feel bad, and will make it up to you.
I always do.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 9, 2013 5:38 PM
Please add Mt. Vernon, Monticello and any number of other similar places to the list that you want to trash and pave over.
There is not a bit of history that needs to be remembered because none of it will be repeated.
Jim P. at December 9, 2013 8:42 PM
Dupree = Jeff?
Okay... Didn't know.
Crid at December 9, 2013 9:46 PM
Dupree = Jeff?
Okay... Didn't know.
Crid at December 9, 2013 9:48 PM
Sorry! Because smartphone.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 9, 2013 11:06 PM
Kelo was wrong from it's inception and because government was involved, it was destined to go nowhere. All these years later and nothing has been built.
http://www.theday.com/article/20131208/OP04/312089967
ed at December 10, 2013 3:02 AM
Thanks for that, would never have thought to look.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 10, 2013 6:13 AM
Crid, I'll grant her "Free Man in Paris" too. But a lot of that is because of Larry Carlton's guitar.
Cousin Dave at December 10, 2013 6:29 AM
Jim P. Let me force you to sell your family's property and move after three generations so I can put up a mall. Then is it fair? Yes the monetary value may compensated, but the intrinsic family value is a different appraisal.
You once asked me to point out where you had ever fallen down on your knowledge of the Constitution. You may pull your face out of the dirt now.
Patrick at December 10, 2013 8:00 AM
Nothin' against Carlton. His version of Sleepwalk was bluntly charming, irresistibly simple.
But if there's a guitar passage in Free Man, I don't remember it... All that comes to mind is the arrhythmic prose, all jammed down in there, like me trying to load veggies into the blender as a hangover cure.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 10, 2013 11:46 AM
(Wow... I'd forgotten how shitty the synth snares of that era sounded.)
(This was a lovely & understated ballad... But sheesh, that percussion effect is unlistenable.)
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 10, 2013 12:16 PM
You're right, I did.
The Fifth Amendment says:
But the argument is not the Constitution directly and how the takings clause of the fifth works. Right now, because of the Kelo decision whatever level of government can come by and force you to sell them anything from your real estate to the Picasso painting you inherited because a private museum wants to display it. You could have restored Henry Ford's Model T serial #5 and Ford via a government entity could force you to sell it to them at $50K and then turn and sell it to the Ford Museum for $500K. And it would be legal to fuck you that way.
So for now it is Constitutional to do it, but should it be is another argument.
Jim P. at December 10, 2013 1:17 PM
Oh, and you got this from the Kelo decision, did you? You didn't because it's not there. Oh, wait. You didn't read it. Because reading a Supreme Court ruling before you actually comment on it is just so...silly, isn't it?
Patrick at December 10, 2013 6:03 PM
You're right. I didn't read the actual opinion. I read the abstraction in the Wiki about it.
So they are totally wrong in the that the dissenting opinion of Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful.
And I know you will say that the SCOTUS ruling was right and final constitutional law. Do you feel the same way about the DOMA ruling? How about Dred Scott v. Sandford?
The current one on the table is O'Neal v. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas. While it is more of an estate/inheritance case than a 5th case, you can see where the ends meet.
The point being is saying that the government has more rights over your property is a losing proposition.
There have been farms and farmer's ruined by the EPA saying that the 100 acre field is now 40% wetland. They can no longer farm all of it. Or if they can still farm it, as soon as they transfer or sell the deed the EPA rule kicks in. So your $1M chunk of property is now only worth $600K. But the local property appraisal is still at $1M for taxes.
Government is not the answer; it is the problem.
Jim P. at December 10, 2013 6:48 PM
Just in case you're distracted by Jim P., Patrick...
Remember this:
What the Kelo case really did was show that government has the final say on where and how you can live. You, Patrick, and everyone who thinks like you can be displaced from your home, ancestral or not, so the government can get more tax money from putting in a convenience store.
Congratulations. You have sold your birthright to the republic, for which you apparently sit.
You are defending the utter domination of government over you and your home. Once again, congratulations!
Radwaste at December 14, 2013 9:44 AM
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