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Home > U.S.

Montgomery Residents Accuse City of Demolishing Homes to Sidestep Eminent
Domain Laws

Mayor Says He's Simply Cleaning Up His City; Residents Charge City With
Targeting Low-Income Families

19 comments

By SARAH NETTER

Aug. 26, 2010

A group of Montgomery, Alabama residents, once too nervous to buck their
elected officials, are organizing in protest what they say is the city's
"reprehensible" practice of demolishing homes to sidestep state eminent domain laws.

Jimmy McCall?s house was being rebuilt when it was demolished
by the city, citing a local blight ordinance.
(Courtesy the Castle
Coalition)

"It's ridiculous the city is doing this," native Montgomery resident and
de-facto community leader Karen Jones said.

"The city is intimidating people," she said. "They don't try to give people
due process of setting up fines or even putting up a fluorescent poster in the
front yard saying, 'We're going to demolish your house.'"

Residents and activists have accused city leaders of using a local blight ordinance to target low-income Montgomery
residents so the city can take their property and re-sell it to high-end
developers without paying compensation.

"We're calling it eminent domain through the back door," said Christina
Walsh, director of activism and coalitions for the Institute for Justice. In the
last week has taken on the case in Montgomery through its grassroots
anti-eminent domain organization, the Castle Coalition.

"There's stories of property owners who have court orders demanding their
properties be left alone and they come in and demolish them," Walsh said.

Eminent domain, the taking of privately-owned property by the government, is
banned in Alabama except for use in publicly-funded projects. But Walsh
speculated that city leaders were trying to sidestep that law and would
eventually sieze the vacant lots through tax sale or re-zoning.

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Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange vehemently denied the charge that the town had
any organized plan to seize property and flout the eminent domain law. City
leaders, he said, simply want to put a stop to the growing number of decepit and
unstable properties that dot the city and prompt complaints from neighbors.

Eminent domain, he said is "not a route we'd go down. "

The Castle Coalition says it doesn't know of anyone who has been compensated
for their demolished houses. Some homeowners have even been billed for the
destruction. And their first avenue of appeal is back to the same city council
members that approved the demolition in the first place.

Longtime Montgomery resident Jimmy McCall had been in and out of court trying
to protect the home he was building when it was torn down in 2008. He later sued
for damages, but the case has been stuck in appeals ever since.

"I think I need to be compensated for my house," he said. "On top of tearing
my house down they put a lien on my property for doing the demolition."

Many of the homes and apartment buildings already torn down are located just
blocks away from the sites of some of Montgomery's proudest moments in the civil
rights movement, including the bus stop where Rosa Parks was arrested and the
final stop in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery.

"This is what freed all of us, so it should take care of the people who
stayed here in Montgomery," Jones said of the city. "This district should be a
historic district, actually. It should be trying to be preserved and
revitalized."

Strange blamed a few outspoken residents, including Jones, for getting the
city and the media riled up.

"It's just a blatant misrepresentation about what in fact is happening down
here," he said. " We're cleaning up neighborhoods through local ordinances that
have nothing to do with going through eminent domain."

The city has so far approved 42 buildings for demoliltion through its blight
ordinances, Strange said, and has torn down 33 private homes and two apartment
buildings. The numbers are up from 2009 when the council approved 29 demolitions
and carried out 22, all on single family homes.

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