For having the unmitigated gall to fight for their homes, Kelo et al are being charged rent for living in their own homes.
Silly homeowners. Don’t they know if the city wants to take your house, you should just let them? Shame on them for fighting! Now they owe the city five years back rent!
I hope this get enough publicity that New London backs off.
Wow thats pretty damn ridiculous.
Setting aside for the moment our feelings about the correctness or incorectness of the decision in Kelo, this outcome is entirely appropriate. The homeowners chose to fight for five years and LOST. Whether they should or not is irrelevent to the OP’s issue. They lost. What possible reason should they benefit from rising home prices during the term of their fight to keep thei homes. As to back rent, it to is appropriate. The court determined that the property was properly taken five years ago. The property did belong to the city since the original taking. They were offered market rate at the time and refused it. Most other holdouts would have been evicted by the police. They were allowed to stay pending the outcome of litigation. That litigation is now over. They rolled the dice and lost, noe it is time to pay up.
None of this should lead you to believe that I support the outcome in Kelo, I have not made up my mind as to that. But the OP was not about whether Kelo was rightly decided but about action subsequent to the decision.
Even if I did agree with this analysis (I don’t) you still don’t get to retroactively charge rent to tenents that didn’t agree to the rent.
Did New London collect property taxes for those five years, I wonder? If so, they can’t demand back rent now, can they?
Any landlord that trys for five years to evict a holdover tennant is certainly entitled to back rent in an amount not agreed to by the holdover tennant upon succesful eviction.
I do not know but they are not entitled to both property tax and rent.
Then I would be interested to see if they did collect property taxes.
What about this? (from the article)
Bolding mine
Can’t we agree this is a different circumstance? This is not someone who rented an apartment then stopped paying rent because they had no hot water. This is someone who bought property and paid a mortgage to a bank. They had their property confiscated by the city, and they fought to keep their homes. If the city is entitled to bank rent, shouldn’t they be collecting it from the mortage holder? If the property was owned by the city since 2000, according to SCOTUS, then the mortgage holders improperly collected money that should have gone to the city, correct?
Zebra, if the lawyer FOR THE RESIDENTS is accurately representing the contents of the agreement then the residents will have a pretty strong defense against the city’s claim for back rent.
Ivylass, a mortgage is a contract between two parties the mortagor and the mortagee. If the tennants had accepted fair market value they would have been able to pay off the mortgage. They chose not to do that and stayed on the property and continued to pay their mortgage. The SCOTUS has udheld this action by the city as a valid excercize of the constitutional power of the State to take the property. Again I am not supporting the SCOTUS decision. But it is the decision they made. There is no appeal of that decision except to Congress.
I wonder what would have happened if the housing market had declined. Do you think New London would have agreed to pay the “higher” 2000 market value, or would they have said, “Nope, you dragged this out for five years. Now you get the lower rate.”
This has the hints of vindictiveness to me.
I do not know what new london would have done and it doesn’t seem vindictive to me. The question is ultimately who is entitled to benefit from the delay. The court determined that New London acted properly and should have gotten the property in 2000. Why should they now have to pay 2005 prices for something they were entitled to in 2000. Consequently if the property value had decreased why should the home owners get the higher 2000 value created by their refusal to comply with the law?
WOW! A thread about my home town! Yep I’m from the New London area of Southeastern Connecticut…I’ll say one thing from a local perspective. There are huge political ramifications with this eminent domain issue. Let me paint a little picture of the area to broaden your view of where this is taking place. Fort Trumbull is located on the Thames river. Several years back 6 I think, Pfizer Inc. Purchased the land in the area adjacent to Fort Trumbull. They then constructed their Global Headquarters…Yep they (the largest Pharmaseutical monster on the planet) moved their corporate HQ from Manhatten to New London. Bringing all the big Muck-de-mucks from NY to NL. With them came an influz of fine restaurants, jobs etc…etc… Directly across the river from the new huge corporate buildings is located Pfizer Global Reseach and Development center - where the meds are manufactured…Penecillin and such…
Next to the Global R&D is the 2nd largest producer of US submarines in the world - Gneral Dynamics. A few miles down the road from them is the Submarine Capital of the World - the Groton Naval Base.
So you see there is a lot of heavy hitters in town, and a global priority involved. Of course the City of New London Jumped on the idea of building beautiful multi-million dollar condos right on the shore -so the people making the big bucks could see their new homes from their office buildings. Who cares about the people who have lived there for 60 years - so what! They don’t pay a quarter of what the new tenents will pay… They don’;t mean anything…
Yeah Right!!! :rolleyes:
Phlosphr, what is the general mood of the community toward the city council? Is there a lot of sympathy for Kelo and Company? How are the town newspapers leaning in their editorials?
Is this really a case about innocent homeowners being pushed out to make room for trendyer owners? I thought it was a question of a blighted and high crime area being taken to improve the community as a whole. It won’t change my analysis above, but I am curious. I guess I should do a little more research.
No, askeptic. The area was not blighted. These were nice townhomes on the waterfront.
And if it happened to them…
No, Fort Trumbull is not a blighted neighborhood nor has anyone claimed it is–that’s a big part of the problem. Instead, it is a working/middle class neighborhood that the City wants to give to a private developer so that the City can ultimately, maybe, perhaps, possibly collect higher property taxes.
I know this is what the talking points say but the court says different.
Ivylass, the character of the area certainly affects the analysis. But the property in question is apparently owned by well heeled middle class white people.
So this not a case of poor people being oppressed.
Depends on which side of the line you sit on. Most people are infuriated with the town council and the first selectman - who have been running things on the fringe of legally for quite a while. The NLDC is heavily involved with the council, and have been since their inception 5-6 years ago.
Sympathy for Kelo and Company - no unfortunately not, they are the unfortunate by-products of modernization and progress. And the city can get nearly quadrupal in property tax for the homes they are planning.
At least that is what the editor of the local newspaper ‘the new london day’ has to say in his editorials. Check out The New London Day to see past editorials.
KSO is exactly correct.