According to this story in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Eminent domain plan may have spooked investors,” Richmond, California’s plan to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain “Wall Street spurned its efforts to refinance its highly rated municipal bonds [A-minus rating], an unusual snub that cost the city nearly $4 million in lost savings.”
“Paying Paul and robbing no one”, indeed. Continue Reading Well, Who Didn’t See This Coming?
Here are links to the cases and other materials (and more) we spoke about at today’s conference on Eminent Domain and Condemnation in Hawaii:
Continue Reading Materials From Today’s Eminent Domain In Hawaii Conference
Check this out: according to a story in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle (“Pricey homes in Richmond’s eminent domain plan“), someone has figured out exactly which properties in Richmond, California are going to get “helped” by Mortgage Resolution Partners and the city in their plan to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain.
Seems like some of these properties are not exactly blighted (remember, the public use hook being used by MRP/Richmond is that the underwater properties create blight and are the source of the ills the city suffers). According to the story, included within the targeted properties are “at least two homes purchased for over $1 million as well as other high-end properties – a revelation that appears to undermine the city’s argument that the plan would combat blight.”
Oops.
MRP’s response? “We don’t discriminate against anyone in this program” said Steven Gluckstern, chairman. Seems like both the rich
Continue Reading Berman. Poletown. Kelo. Richmond. When Will They Ever Learn?
Your mission Dan, should you decide to accept it, is to review the competing op-eds about Mortgage Resolution Partners-backed plan for municipalities to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain, and decide which ones are good, and which ones are full of it.
Continue Reading Mortgage Taking Tuesday – Mission: Impossible?
Here is a deeper look at the two lawsuits filed lastweek in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against the City ofRichmond, California, for the city’s Mortgage Resolution Partners-backed plan to condemn underwater mortgages, specifically those held by out-of-state securitizedbonds, residential mortgage-backed securitization (RMBS) trusts. The first Complaint was brought by Wells Fargo and a number of mortgage holders onbehalf of their trusts (“Wells Fargo” suit). The other, filed concurrently, was brought Wednesday bythe Bank of New York Mellon for its trusts(“Bank of NYM suit”).
My Damon Key colleague Bethany C.K. Ace has digested the complaints and provides us with her thoughts on the cases below. She joined me and Mark M. Murakami as the co-author of Recent Developments in Eminent Domain: Public Use, which is forthcoming in the next edition of the Urban Lawyer.
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More On The Two Federal Lawsuits Challenging The Underwater Mortgage Taking Scheme
Today’s the first day of the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, so we haven’t had time to do more than scan the Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, filed yesterday in San Francisco federal court, challenging the plans of Mortgage Resolution Partners and the City of Richmond, California to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain.
We’ll have more, but here are two initial reports:
Here’s the latest from the New Jersey Supreme Court on the power of railroads to take property, and when land is already being put to a “prior public use” and thus immune from being taken.
In Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Intermodal Properties, LLC, No. A-117-11 (Aug. 6, 2013), the court held that the railroad had the power to condemn an adjacent parcel already used as a parking facility to expand its rail facility to, among other benefits, provide more parking space. It’s a long opinion (42 pages) so we won’t go into it in great detail, so here’s the short version.
The court held that the statutory requirement that a railroad’s condemnation be “not incompatible with the public interest” was met. Although the taking was for parking and the property taken was already being used for parking by its owner, this did not qualify as a prior public
Continue Reading New Jersey Explains Prior Public Use And Railroad Takings
Update: From the July 13 WaPo: As Wal-Mart threatens to walk, what’s next for a dying shopping center? (“The Skyland Shopping Center in Southeast Washington is amost dead. Shops are shuttered and windows broken.” Gee, we wonder why?). See also Gideon Kanner’s thoughts on the story at “Another Kelo Case in the Marking?”
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You remember the Skyland redevelopment project in Washington, D.C., don’t you? That’s the one we’ve covered before, which has resulted in boocoo court decisions, most of them unfavorable to the small property owners whose businesses were considered “blighting factors” to the surrounding area, and thus stood in the way of a redevelopment project coveted by the city fathers and mothers. See DeSilva v. District of Columbia, No. 10-CV-1069 (Feb. 24, 2011); Rumber v. District of Columbia, 487 F.3d 941 (D.C. Cir. 2007); Franco v. National Capital Revitalization Comm’n, 930 A.2d
Continue Reading If This Wasn’t So Depressing (And Predictable), It Might Be Funny
Another date to save on your calendar: the 2014 Conference of the International Academic Association on Planning, Law, and Property Rights will be held from February 11-14, 2014 in Haifa, Israel, at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The Conference will include the usual presentations, plus day-long workshops, and excursions. You don’t need to be a PLPR member (although joining is free), nor do you have to be an “academic.”
We attended the 2013 PLPR Conference in Portland, and it was well worth it. The message of PLPR is “Planning matters. Law matters. Property matters,” and the 2013 Conference delivered, with presentations on those topics with an emphasis on international practices.
The 2014 event is chaired by Professor Rachelle Alterman, who, among other accomplishments, edited Takings International (2010), a book our ABA Section published that is a comparative study of how what we call regulatory takings are treated worldwide.
Continue Reading 2014 Planning, Law, And Property Rights Conference – Haifa
This is a long one from the California Court of Appeal, Fourth District (58 pages, with an 11-page dissent), so we’re not going to go into detail. But if a local government’s conflict with an all-powerful state agency, shoreline and coastal law, or how the concept of governmental “pretext” is treated in areas outside of eminent domain law is your cup of tea, then be sure to check out City of Dana Point v. California Coastal Comm’n, No. D060260 (June 17, 2013).
Property owner created 125 lots on an oceanfront slope. On the inland side of the development is a public park built by the developer, and a public beach is on the seaside, donated by the developer. (That’s “mauka” and “makai” respectively for you Hawaii people.) Public access trails run through the development, linking the park and the beach. The city adopted an ordinance requiring the installation of
Continue Reading Cal App Tackles Pretext … But Not Eminent Domain Pretext
