Free Republic

...So YOU thought KELO was abusive...??? KLEPTOCRACY 201 - Today's Lesson Today, class, we will learn how to exercise 'eminent domain' without that pesky need to pay the owner ANYTHING for the property... ...and using this new method, you can not only strong-arm the property away from its rightful owner, but you STILL get to keep shaking down the "property owner" for all those great  PROPERTY TAXES on the parcel, AS WELL! ...WHAT could be BETTER than THAT???!!! ...It's a Kleptocrat's DREAM!!!

The smart-development movement has made sprawl worse, not better

Bobby Prigel says building an organic creamery will keep his farm alive. But preservationists say it will spoil the rural landscape. GLEN ARM, Md. -- Bobby Prigel seems like a poster child for the local-food movement. A fourth-generation dairy farmer, he wants to build a creamery to make organic butter, yogurt, cheese and ice cream. He wants to sell those products to consumers in nearby Baltimore instead of shipping his milk out of state. He wants to make enough money to pass on the farm to a fifth generation. But some neighbors and conservationists are challenging Prigel's plans. Opponents, led...

ELLIE WOOTEN, the likable mayor of this likable Central Valley city, is on her way to the office when her cellphone rings. A constituent wants her mortgage payments reduced, and is hoping that the mayor has some clout with her lender. Although Merced has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, this borrower isn’t in such dire straits. She’s not even behind on her mortgage. But her oldest daughter is turning 18, which means an end to $500 a month in child support. She just wants a better deal. The mayor hangs up and shrugs: “It’s a surprise...

SACRAMENTO – California is on the verge of initiating a historic rewrite of local planning laws, fusing for the first time the issues of urban growth and global warming. Unprecedented nationally, the complex legislation would steer communities toward land-use policies to contain sprawl, using as much as $12 billion a year in state-controlled transportation funds as an incentive. “This bill will change the way California grows,” said state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, its author. Under the measure, the state Air Resources Board would establish targets for 17 regions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a broader campaign to...

BOSTON — As a wave of home foreclosures courses through the United States, some of the nation’s hardest hit cities think they have found a way to ease the blight left on their communities by the crisis. Using taxpayer and private money, Boston, Minneapolis, San Diego and a handful of other places are buying foreclosed properties to refurbish and resell them to developers and homeowners in an effort to prevent troubled neighborhoods from sliding into urban decay. The efforts so far have been taken on a small scale. But local officials say they can become an important pillar of any...

U.S. Rep. Henry Brown on Thursday defended a bill that would help future homeowners on the undeveloped southwestern end of Kiawah Island qualify for federally subsidized flood insurance. Brown, R-S.C., said he introduced the bill last month at the behest of the town of Kiawah Island, and that "I had no idea there was a developer" connected with the legislation.

It looks almost like an average-size house that's been sliced in half. At 12 feet wide, the neat, new single-family home is squeezed onto the slenderest of strips of land on a Brooklyn Park street of modest, post-World War II houses. The home joins an 18-foot-wide one built in the past year in the community that spans Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. A similar house is planned for another of the 25-foot-wide empty lots in the area. While building on these infill lots in mature, developed communities with established roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure is considered "smart growth," residents...

Today’s dangerous housing problems in the Southwestern part of Houston have been greatly exacerbated by the actions of Houston city government in the settlement of large numbers of Katrina evacuees in the area. But the problem does not lie solely in past actions. The City of Houston, in violation of provisions of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, continues to act to concentrate the predominately low-income, African-American evacuees in these deteriorated, high crime, segregated apartments. So far neither the state or the federal government has acted to stop the city’s actions. Let’s look back to 2005 to see how this developed....

A fisherman turned drug smuggler turned retired old salt, Floyd Brown claims he can find his way back here – one of the last Florida frontiers – without a compass from anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a skill, he says, he put to use more than once when he ferried bales of marijuana from Latin America to the Shark River in the 1970s. A direct descendant of the 19th century pirates who first settled here in these 10,000 islands, Brown is like many residents in Everglades City. Together they've managed to engineer a modern day coup in Florida:...

As the military prepares to close Fort Lawton, an Army Reserve base nestled in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, a city proposal to develop a 200-home subdivision that includes housing for the homeless angers some residents. ___ A newly released city plan to redevelop the soon-to-be-closed Fort Lawton in Seattle calls for building a 200-home subdivision of market-rate and affordable housing on about 18 acres. At a final community meeting Saturday at Fort Lawton, those living near the Army Reserve base said they didn't oppose housing for the homeless, but they worried that the total number of homes proposed and the percentage...

Welcome to Hyattsville, population 15,000, where the downtown looks more like New York City and the neighborhoods more like Iowa. The City Council this spring passed a law reaffirming residents' rights to grow vegetables on front lawns. Three months later, some residents have 8-foot-high corn patches in front of their homes, and neighbors say they don't mind. "I think some people might consider different types of landscapes unsightly, just like different painting schemes or building additions - which may increase or decrease property values - but it is still permitted by our code," Mayor William F. Gardiner said. Residents always...

Think there's no such thing as too much parking? Take a look at Tysons Corner, where there's more parking than jobs, more parking than office space, more parking than in downtown Washington. That must change, said advocates and politicians seeking to transform Virginia's largest business hub from suburb to city. Reducing parking, charging for parking and finding new uses for the acres of parking that separate Tysons' buildings and the people inside is at the heart of plans to remake the area.... "Who wants parking spaces to be the hallmark of a development?" said Clark Tyler, chairman of a Fairfax...

American visitors to Paris, Rome, Prague, or Barcelona, comparing what they see with what is familiar from their own continent, will recognize how careless their countrymen often have been in their attempts to create cities. But the American who leaves the routes prescribed by the Ministries of Tourism will quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it. Elsewhere, European cities are going the way of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surrounded first by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the...

A Brooklyn neighborhood finally recovers from decades of misguided urban policies ___ These days, when Morris Todash walks the streets of Bushwick, a two-square-mile neighborhood of 100,000 people in central Brooklyn, he likes what he sees. On the long-abandoned seven-acre site of the former Rheingold Brewery, new two-family homes and condominiums have sprung up. On the side streets along Broadway—not so long ago, pockmarked with desolate lots where stray dogs wandered amid burned-out cars—more new homes arise and old ones get impressive face-lifts. New businesses—an organic grocery store, a fashionable restaurant—seem to be opening on every corner. Todash, whose insurance...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they “want the diversity.” Yet one person’s frontier, it turns out, is often another’s front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and...

Across the state, a four-letter word is spoken — sometimes righteously, other times disdainfully — in council chambers, planning offices and courtrooms. COAH. The revised, third-round Council on Affordable Housing Rules could bring the most confusion — and legal wrangling — yet seen in the decades-old, statewide program. The council's new regulations and requirements plan for 115,000 new affordable housing units statewide. The cost estimate for the building of those units is estimated by attorneys and planners to amount to as much as $18.5 billion across the Garden State. Statewide concerns on both sides of the controversy span from the...

IS IT getting too expensive to build affordable housing in Massachusetts? more stories like this Emergency Hub ranks high on inner city business list What happens when doctors want to get a life? American pilots blame management for delays, poor service American pilots to protest at Logan On average, it costs more than $200,000 a unit to build such housing and many projects cost significantly more. A new proposal in the state Senate would make those projects even more expensive. The Senate housing bill would require nonprofit entities and for-profit firms that build most of the region's affordable housing to...

New homes built in Montgomery County would have to meet federal energy efficiency standards under innovative legislation approved yesterday by the County Council over the objections of builders who said that the mandate would drive up costs for consumers. The measure, meant to reduce energy consumption by 15 to 30 percent, is part of a far-reaching environmental initiative. It includes property tax credits for residents who switch to renewable energy, a requirement that residents disclose utility costs when they sell a home and a plan to get county officials to trade in their government-issued sport-utility vehicles. "We are attacking literally...

Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are. The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl. The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has been hit hard. Prices tumbled an average of 11 percent in the past year. That's the big picture. But a look at Ashburn, Va., about 40 miles from the center...