The Show-Me Institute has a new article about eminent domain abuse:
The summer of 2005 was not a good one for Sharon Fitzgerald. On Memorial Day, she learned she had inoperable lung cancer. Three days later, she got a knock on her door.It was Jonathan Browne, head of real estate developer Novus Equities. He wanted to buy her house. And he made it clear that this was an offer she couldn't refuse.
"He told us that if we didn't sell, he'd just use eminent domain and take our home anyway," said Sharon, "What could we do? With my health and everything and the chance to lose our home anyway, we didn't really have a choice."
Sharon and her husband Michael reluctantly agreed to sell. They wanted to get the issue behind them so they could concentrate on dealing with her illness. But when the time came to close on the house, they were dealt another blow: "It turned out that Browne didn't have enough money from the banks to close," said Sharon.
The article discusses how the Sunset Hills project pitted neighbor against neighbor, and how it hurt both those who wanted to move and those who wanted to stay. We need to prohibit the abuse of eminent domain for private profit so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
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