Long Branch homeowners win round on eminent domain fight!

[bababooey]

They basically robbed these people of their land, unjust compensation so the developers could make millions. Schneider should be ashamed, how much $$ did he get from the developers? Finally, maybe a little justice.


Long Branch homeowners win round in eminent domain fight

by MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger Friday August 08, 2008, 12:05 AM


Residents of a Long Branch neighborhood slated to be seized by the city and razed to make way for an oceanfront redevelopment project will get a chance to save their homes, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The court upheld a number of the city's actions, including its right to delegate its eminent domain authority to the developer but said Long Branch failed to show the condemned homes met the legal definition of blighted.

The unanimous 85-page ruling was viewed by critics of eminent domain as another blow to towns by an increasingly skeptical New Jersey judiciary. Over the past year, the courts have been reining in towns' use of sweeping seizure powers to make way for large-scale redevelopment.

The Long Branch case, in particular, gained national attention from property rights advocates, who hailed Thursday's decision as long overdue.

"The ruling once again reaffirms the constitutional rights of property owners," said state Public Advocate Ronald Chen, whose office joined in the legal fight. "As such, this is not just a victory for the ... homeowners, but for every citizen of this state."

He called on Long Branch to drop its pursuit of the homes.
Rather than dismiss the case, though, Judges Joseph Lisa, Richard Newman and Paulette Sapp-Peterson sent it back to Superior Court Assignment Judge Lawrence M. Lawson in Freehold for a hearing in which the city will have to prove the properties are blighted.

That disappointed homeowner Denise Hoagland, who said she felt Lawson had not given residents fair consideration back in 2006.
"It just prolongs our nightmare," she said.

Long Branch had moved to seize three dozen homes in the north end of its oceanfront -- on Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue -- to continue its massive redevelopment project. Residents complained the city declared the entire area blighted without taking into consideration their well-maintained modest bungalows, where many had lived for more than 40 years.

Of the 36 properties sought, the majority have contracted with or sold to the developer. About 13 are fighting the condemnation.
The city argued the neighborhood had a high vacancy rate and some homes were in poor condition. Officials maintained market forces would not improve conditions.

Mayor Adam Schneider said he interprets the decision as "saying we now have to meet a standard that wasn't yet set when we did our work in 2005 and when Judge Lawson decided it in 2006."
He said he does not consider the ruling a defeat, because the city can prove the area is blighted.

"It simply slows down the process at a time that's not so bad, because nobody's building anyway," agreed city attorney James Aaron. "Let the economy turn around."

Aaron said by dismissing most resident claims, the decision finally settled "venomous" allegations that he and another attorney, James Greenbaum, had a conflict of interest dating from their previous representation of the developer's parent company, K. Hovnanian.

The city has 20 days to decide whether to appeal to the state Supreme Court or request a hearing within six months before Lawson.

Thursday's decision said an area cannot be considered blighted solely because it generates a lower amount of property taxes for a municipality and less spending at local businesses than it would if it were redeveloped.

That would set a dangerous precedent, the court said, prompting seizures of property based on a "perceived insufficiency of wealth" and setting up a situation in which properties would be continuously subject to redevelopment.

Towns have long had a constitutional right in New Jersey to seize blighted property. But under a sweeping redevelopment law adopted in 1991, the definition was broadened to include an "underutilized" category, and towns began using it to remake old residential and industrial neighborhoods into large-scale developments.

But in 2007, the state Supreme Court raised serious questions about the practice by ordering that a finding of actual blight was needed before private property could be seized. The decision yesterday relied heavily on the decision in Gallenthin Realty Development Inc. vs. Borough of Paulsboro.

"We conclude that, under Gallenthin's heightened standard, the record does not contain substantial evidence to support the city's findings under any of the subsections (of the state's Local Redevelopment and Housing Law) upon which it relied," the court wrote yesterday.

William Ward, attorney for homeowners Louis and Lillian Anzalone, said he was pleased with the decision and said it is the first step in getting the condemnation overturned.

"The city as a practical matter is not going to be able to prove blight, and I doubt they'll be able to find a planning expert who will say there is blight," he said.

[plugcrazy]

It is always the little people who lose, and the political power horses who wins. It is good to see that the power horses are finally being put in their place.

[bababooey]

That's Not Blight. It's New Jersey.
August 12, 2008; Page A19
From The Wall Street Journal

By WILLIAM MCGURN




When one lives in New Jersey, one sets one's expectations accordingly. We are a people, after all, whose two pro football teams still call themselves "New York." Whose governor responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by appointing a man he later said was his lover to be the state's adviser for homeland security. Whose most famous mayor -- Jersey City's Frank Hague -- left office more than 60 years ago but is still remembered for having a special desk drawer he could push out like a bank teller, the easier for those sitting before him to deposit their cash. Whose . . . well, you get the point.

The point is that these aren't aberrations. These more or less represent business as usual in our beloved Garden State. So when the good guys actually win one, it's big news.

John Kramer, Institute for Justice Lori Ann Vendetti in front of the house she owns in Long Branch.

That's just what happened last Thursday. In the latest of man-bites-dog rulings from the state courts, a three-judge panel of the New Jersey Appellate Division actually sided with ordinary homeowners over a greedy local government and developer.
In their ruling, the judges unanimously reversed a lower-court decision giving the city of Long Branch a green light to pursue its redevelopment plan. That has put a serious crimp into the city's hopes for taking the homes of about a dozen longtime residents -- and turning them over to a developer to put up luxury condos in their place.

One of these homeowners is Lori Ann Vendetti. Lori owns a house here on Ocean Terrace that she rents out. But she lives just across the street with her parents in the brick house her father -- a truck driver -- built back in 1960. For the Vendettis, this tidy little home with its front-yard ocean view represents their piece of the American Dream.

"Our houses may not be mansions," she says. "But they are our homes. And we will fight for our homes like we would fight for any family member who is sick or in trouble." Like her neighbors, Lori has nowhere near the resources the town and the developers do. But with the help of the Washington-based Institute for Justice -- the nation's only libertarian public interest law firm -- they are fighting back.

You might not think what is happening to the Vendettis and their friends could happen in America. And it didn't used to be this way -- at least when the "public use" provision of federal and state constitutions was understood to mean that governments could only invoke eminent domain for, say, a highway or school. Unfortunately, expansive court rulings have allowed local politicians to take from the poor and give to the rich.

Probably the worst was the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London. In that case, the high court ruled that the Connecticut town was within its rights to take Susette Kelo's waterfront house on the grounds of economic redevelopment. In a tart dissent, Sandra Day O'Connor rightly noted that the beneficiaries of such logic would inevitably be the rich and politically well-connected. "Nothing," she wrote, "is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

The usual M.O. for city fathers eyeing some juicy piece of property is to declare the homes of people living there "blighted." That's just what happened to Lori and her neighbors. She says that when Long Branch first started to talk about a redevelopment plan in the mid-1990s, no one even suspected their homes were being targeted for teardown. Then they found that their neighborhood was officially declared blighted.

The good news is that while New Jersey's politicos are apparently content to leave their citizens vulnerable to these kinds of seizures, the courts have been more, well, judicious. In a welcome ruling last year, the New Jersey Supreme Court in Gallenthin Realty Development Inc. v. Borough of Paulsboro said that the government could not declare a property blighted just because someone else might put it to higher economic use. Last week the appellate court followed up by sending the Long Branch case back to the lower court. The three judges made clear they were skeptical of the blight designation -- and put the burden on the city to prove it.

Now, anyone who walks down these streets can see that while the homes may be modest, they are not blighted. A visitor can also see how terrible it is for ordinary Americans to have to live under the threat of a forced sale simply because some government official decides their homes aren't upscale enough.

"My parents want to fix up their fence, I want to build on my property, and other people have their own improvements," says Lori. "But who wants to invest your money when you think the city is just going to end up taking your home from you?" Good question.

[cracklepopper]

Don't think they're out of the woods yet, but it's a start.

[pinhead44]

Property owners got killed in New London, Connecticut a few years ago. Maybe the tide is finally turning.