Angry in the Great White North

From the Fairfield County Weekly:

The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation.

In some cases, their debt could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover, the homeowners are being offered buyouts based on the market rate as it was in 2000.

So in 2000, the people learn that the local government is going to confiscate their land for public use -- but that public use was going to be a hotel, a conference center, offices and upscale housing, and not a road or a bridge.

You see, the argument goes, the public good is enhanced if we get rid of low quality, low tax housing, and put in posh hotels and coffee shops.

Shockingly, five years later, the Supreme Court agrees, setting the stage for local governments to confiscate any low tax property and put in spanking new condos. It's happening in San Diego.

But in New London, where all this started, the city is going to charge the people who lived in their homes while the case was being argued rent for doing so, and compensate them at the market value of the homes in 2000, when all this started.

Oh, and if the landowners were renting their homes, all the money earned has to be forked over to the city, with interest, since the city was the true landowner, and thus the only entity who could charge rent.

If the money isn't forthcoming, the city will sue.

Punishment, I suppose, for being uppity and wasting the city's precious time. That'll teach 'em to take on city hall:

One of his neighbors, case namesake Susette Kelo, who owns a single-family house with her husband, learned she would owe in the ballpark of 57 grand. "I'd leave here broke," says Kelo. "I wouldn't have a home or any money to get one. I could probably get a large-size refrigerator box and live under the bridge."

Maybe the lawyers representing New London can give Susette Kelo a copy of the Supreme Court decision. She could use it to line her refrigerator box against leaks.