NY's Highest Court Approves Brooklyn Development

[jambr380]

So if you own a large piece of land that can be developed and yet you keep it in disrepair or decide to do nothing with it because of lack of funds or some internal distaste for doing it or because your family owned it for generations and that's the way your great grandfather want to leave the land, the government, for the greater good of the community and the state and the nation in general, doesn't have the right to pay you far markey value for that land because it's perceived self interest value of the land to you is so much more than that? And that's Marxist!!!

Sorry. Not buying it. Argue away and state all your arguments. To me they won't matter. Discuss this further with others. I disagree strongly and nothing will change my mind on that. The right to eminent domain is a long standing, legal right of this government that I believe in, and that I believe is used and has been used for the greater good of America for centuries.

I am all for urban renewal. Coming from Boston and moving to Orlando has been quite a culture shock for me. We Bostonians kinda take for granted what has been done to [most of] the city to make it clean, safe, and very liveable. This has obviously taken place in many other northeastern cities as well.

Down here, although there are some 'nice' areas, there are a lot of crappy areas, too. Rather than buying up run down places near the city center, developers purchase large plots of land outside the city, which is why there is so much 'urban sprawl' here. There isn't enough appreciation for what a city center means down here and it is what I miss the most.

NY is obviously very very populated- creating nice areas with additional employment in the city can only help. I understand that many don't like the government sticking their noses into this type of thing, but for the greater good of humanity, it really is for the best.

[Eja117]

So if you own a large piece of land that can be developed and yet you keep it in disrepair or decide to do nothing with it because of lack of funds or some internal distaste for doing it or because your family owned it for generations and that's the way your great grandfather want to leave the land, the government, for the greater good of the community and the state and the nation in general, doesn't have the right to pay you far markey value for that land because it's perceived self interest value of the land to you is so much more than that? And that's Marxist!!!

Sorry. Not buying it. Argue away and state all your arguments. To me they won't matter. Discuss this further with others. I disagree strongly and nothing will change my mind on that. The right to eminent domain is a long standing, legal right of this government that I believe in, and that I believe is used and has been used for the greater good of America for centuries.

Well to answer your question you are absolutely correct on all issues. Eminent domain is a natural enemy of property rights and so is Marxism. Marxism is an extreme example because that states there is no private property. Eminent domain admits that the property at least has to be paid for what a buyer might generally expect to pay for a property.
Eminent domain can be an excellent tool. You are absolutely right that eminent domain has been used and will continue to be used and has certainly been used for the greater good of America. Just not usually NBA team owners or other private interests.

[Eja117]

I just want to add this about perceived self interest value and eminent domain. 99.999 times out of 100 the party that is whining about getting only fair market value and not receiving perceived self interest value are just trying to rape the government or private entity that is going to make the area a better place of huge amounts of money. It's pure greed.

You are absolutely right again. It would be pure greed. Which in a free market society is a very good thing. Gordon Geko. The man was a genius. Good friends with Adam Smith.

It is especially a good thing when the other person or entity trying to get the land is also motivated purely by greed. That is how the Invisible Hand works.
Courts aren't Invisible Hands. Usually the Invisible Hand gets it right. Sometimes it gets it wrong. Courts also sometimes get things right and wrong.

[guava_wrench]

touche nick. I guess it is considered a pretty bad area where they want to develop and maybe if they use eminent domain and overpay the people for it they don't have much to complain about it if they haven't taken care of it.

But I would definitely take issue on some level with some of Brick's comments.

An NBA arena isn't a public work for everyone like a railroad. Railroads were a vital link at that time. Power lines are vital. NBA arenas aren't.

This is private land being taken not to provide jobs or enhance people's quality of life, but in order to make someone money who isn't interested in sharing any of it. If they had to share profits with these people as part owners or something so they were partners in the development process it would be a different twist, but I doubt that's what will happen.

It's not the public vs private thing I have issue with. It's the private vs private. It's the idea that any home can be grabbed for someone else because they are "better" than you. The idea that because a guy will take the land and make money with it, somehow that's a better plan than your idea to just live on it. I mean if you have a home you like and someone wants it at some point "Not for sale" has to be a legit possibility and this takes away that possibility for a lot of people in favor of just one.

I'm very much looking forward to a more legal viewpoint here.

My financial point is this. You have a home. It has a certain value to you. You bought it for let's say 300K, but your personal value to it is 1mill. That's what you value it at. It's your property. That's legit. The fact that there is only one supply (that one place) and a certain demand (yours, and potentially others) means that's what it's worth.  Then a judge says "Sorry. It's not worth that. You have to sell for $310K".

Well now you're screwed out of 690K. Now you have to find some other home that you don't want and you only have this much to do it.

It basically stomps on the concept of free market economics and willing buying and sellers.  It gives an incredible advantage to the buyer.  Now the buyer gets to (with the help of a judge) set the price. It's bad economics.

Now if this is a situation like a railroad that benefits millions of people at the expense of a few that's one thing, but when it benefits the few (wealthy NBA owners) at the potential expense of the many that to me is a serious violation of personal property and amounts to a form of theft.

What if you had to sell your cars to taxi companys? It's not that different. It's just not that different from simple seizure/outright theft. The only difference is that in one case you get nothing and in the other you get not enough.

I guess in this instance, it can be argued that this private enterprise, while making the owners of that enterprise tons of money, will also open up a ton of full time employment opportunities, will increase property values in the area, will generate a much larger amount of local real estate taxes, increase the future business development in the area, which all will then lead to better civic pride and an urban renewal, the type of which hasn't been seen in that area of the buroughs in perhaps 70-80 years.

That, far outweighs the perceived value the current owner of the property has as the overall good of the community and it's development and renewal is greatly more important than what the current owners are doing with the property or what they perceive the property is worth to them.

nick I at least half way agree with you, especially in this instance. I definitely hope all those things happen.

But there's still some problems here. Communities aren't entitled to those things. They aren't entitled to more taxes, or more employment. They aren't entitled to any of it. Also private developers aren't entitled to make money or to land to make money with.
But you are entitled to keep, own, and enjoy your private property as you see fit unless maybe it's causing a hazard of some sort.
If those things are so valuable then they need to be paid for. Also the people living in the area have every right to leave the area if they don't like it and the business owner has a right to try to find another place and negotiate with those owners.  I have to guess there must be some commercial property in Brooklyn or possibly public space. I'm not sure this is the only option.

Also you said one other thing, which is that all those benefits outweigh the perceived value of the property owners. That's not necessarily true, although generally it is probably true in this case. You could use all the arguments you made to seize anywhere or anything. If the owners are properly paid then maybe you would be right, but I wonder if that will happen here.
But take for example an extreme case (which is almost certainly not the case here).  Mt. Rushmore was seized from the Lakota Indians. They were offered compensation (not sure how much. I don't think it was a lot). The problem is that the Black Hills wasn't just Lakota land, but that they considered it holy the way some might consider the Wailing Wall or the Vatican. If you tried to seize that from someone using all the arguments you made (and Mt. Rushmore obviously has tremendous value for many in the public) you would just be absolutely wrong to say that the value of all that exceeds the perceived value of the property owner. That almost certainly isn't the case here, but when you start removing neighborhoods at some point someone says "That's my church where I was married and my kids were baptized." Someone says "That's the hospital where my father died and my kids were born". Someone says "That's the school where my illiterate father learned to read at night school and my kid learned to shoot a ball during the day".  Suddenly the perceived value of the area is much higher than the price tag a business or court puts on it and not paying for that value is simply anti-Adam Smith economics.

Granted Adam Smith failed to account for various market failures and there are probably market failures here that could definitely stand to be dealt with here.

However Adam Smith points out specifically that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it" as influenced by its scarcity. This is the specific point of self-interested economics.

By comparison the concept of doing what is best for "everyone" instead of the property owners is positively Marxist.
Marx is absolutely correct perhaps if you consider naturally public entities such as what Brick mentions. Power lines. Jailes. Railroads back in the day. But not NBA arenas or shopping malls, or Wal-Mart stores, or hotels, or anything along those lines.

I don't see why private property should trump other considerations.

[guava_wrench]

touche nick. I guess it is considered a pretty bad area where they want to develop and maybe if they use eminent domain and overpay the people for it they don't have much to complain about it if they haven't taken care of it.

But I would definitely take issue on some level with some of Brick's comments.

An NBA arena isn't a public work for everyone like a railroad. Railroads were a vital link at that time. Power lines are vital. NBA arenas aren't.

This is private land being taken not to provide jobs or enhance people's quality of life, but in order to make someone money who isn't interested in sharing any of it. If they had to share profits with these people as part owners or something so they were partners in the development process it would be a different twist, but I doubt that's what will happen.

It's not the public vs private thing I have issue with. It's the private vs private. It's the idea that any home can be grabbed for someone else because they are "better" than you. The idea that because a guy will take the land and make money with it, somehow that's a better plan than your idea to just live on it. I mean if you have a home you like and someone wants it at some point "Not for sale" has to be a legit possibility and this takes away that possibility for a lot of people in favor of just one.

I'm very much looking forward to a more legal viewpoint here.

My financial point is this. You have a home. It has a certain value to you. You bought it for let's say 300K, but your personal value to it is 1mill. That's what you value it at. It's your property. That's legit. The fact that there is only one supply (that one place) and a certain demand (yours, and potentially others) means that's what it's worth.  Then a judge says "Sorry. It's not worth that. You have to sell for $310K".

Well now you're screwed out of 690K. Now you have to find some other home that you don't want and you only have this much to do it.

It basically stomps on the concept of free market economics and willing buying and sellers.  It gives an incredible advantage to the buyer.  Now the buyer gets to (with the help of a judge) set the price. It's bad economics.

Now if this is a situation like a railroad that benefits millions of people at the expense of a few that's one thing, but when it benefits the few (wealthy NBA owners) at the potential expense of the many that to me is a serious violation of personal property and amounts to a form of theft.

What if you had to sell your cars to taxi companys? It's not that different. It's just not that different from simple seizure/outright theft. The only difference is that in one case you get nothing and in the other you get not enough.

The cars into taxis analogy makes no sense. Cars are not limited in the way that land is. There are plenty of unsold cars that can be bought by taxi companies.

If a city wants to develop, especially someplace as densely populated as NYC or Brooklyn, there aren't many areas available. I don't see why 'I was here first' should take precedence over job generation and other benefits.

I am also almost always in favor of any project that involves hi-rise housing, since it is a far more efficient use of land.

[PosImpos]

Good.  This is a good thing for the Nets and it's a good thing for the people of Brooklyn (and NYC in general).

I'm sure that's what the court was thinking of when it approved this.  It's in the best interests of the community.

[Roy Hobbs]

I have to admit that grabbing private property so it can become someone else's private property bothers me a little for many ethical, legal, and financial reasons. My background is a little more financial so all I would say there is that it essentially violates and puts an unnatural somewhat political twist into the natural laws of supply and demand.

The legal issue I would be curious to see someone like Roy comment on.

I'm on vacation, so no long comments from me today, other than to say that this decision was pretty much mandated by the Kelo v. City of New London decision.  New York could have said it had more restrictive condemnation (eminent domain) laws than the U.S. Constitution, but that was never very likely.  There's some potential distinction, I guess, if the courts decided that this land wasn't blighted (like I believe it was in Kelo), but states have been taking land for a "proper public purpose" for decades.  The definition of what is "public" and what is a "proper purpose" has traditionally been up for debate.

I do condemnation work for the State of New Jersey, and I can say that in the case of strictly land takings, we do a pretty good job about compensating property owners; there's a multi-step process that determines compensation, and it can include multiple hearings, appraisals from both sides, etc.  We generally pay well over what our appraiser says the property is worth. 

My bigger issues are when we take property from a business (as things like lost profits aren't compensated for adequately, in my mind), and when we take purely private land and give it to a private landowner (like the Kelo and Nets situations).  It's a philosophical thing, but I think eminent domain should only be used for public necessities.  Allowing the government to take anybody's land for any remotely justifiable purpose has the effect of ensuring that governments will not adequately pursue other alternatives.

[butterbeanlove]

Well said Roy, and I encourage people to read the New London case to see how that worked out now that Pfizer is leaving town as soon as their tax breaks expire.

My impression is the Supreme Court decision rested upon the unexamined assumption that more revenues for the government are always a public good... regardless of the quality of life. You could seize lots of places and rezone them for industry or commercial development and then use those revenues to pay for more public safety revenues. It's a hamster wheel.

[dark_lord]

i think the move to brooklyn will be good for the franchise, especially if they land a top free agent.