Across the nation, cities and developers are fighting very hard to hold on to their power to confiscate other people's homes and businesses for private development. There is overwhelming public support for an end to eminent domain abuse. Legislatures need to make real changes, not cosmetic ones, to end eminent domain for private commercial development throughout the country. |
Any area in Florida can be designated as blighted under Florida's current law. |
Both of these bills will put a stop to that abuse of eminent domain. They will still be able to take dangerous properties, abandoned properties — all of the things that people would look at and say, 'That property is blighted.' But they will no longer be able to take perfectly fine, functioning homes and businesses because some other glitzier home and business could be built there. |
Florida's laws are one of the worst in the country for using eminent domain for private development. It is absolutely terrible. |
It's going to set an example and encourage other banks and hopefully developers to say they will not take advantage of the government's power of eminent domain to force people out of their homes and businesses. It's the right thing to do, and it also makes sense as a business decision. These projects are so wildly unpopular, they're going to encounter political opposition and maybe litigation, and they often don't work anyway. |
Plans are being made with the idea of just wiping people out. Technically, they'll be asked to sell, but (eminent domain) is something threatened from the very beginning. |
Some states have taken tentative first steps, but much remains to be done to fully protect home and business owners. |
The idea that you can work hard and save and finally buy something and have it taken from you because somebody else richer can make more money off of that land makes a mockery of what everyone is striving for. |
The only people who support the use of eminent domain for private development are cities that use it, developers and businesses that benefit from it and planners who plan it. Everyone else hates it. |
The vast, overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to using eminent domain. |
There is going to be a mega-debate. The momentum toward legislative reform is very strong. |
This bill places unprecedented limits on eminent domain abuse. The one glaring shortcoming is the temporary exceptions for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but even that does not dampen the near total victory this bill provides. |
This is an enormous problem all across the country. Eminent domain is being used to take prime real estate for private development projects. |
We lost the Supreme Court case, but we're ultimately going to win in changing the way that eminent domain is going to be used in this country. |