NATION’S LARGEST EMINENT DOMAIN LAND GRAB DEFEATED
“Monday evening, after months of living with the uncertainty that they wouldn’t have a home for Christmas, the residents of Pleasant Ridge scored a major victory against a mayor who sought to bulldoze 354 homes in Charlestown, Indiana. At a city council meeting that went late into the night, the council voted unanimously to reject the mayor’s plan to raze the neighborhood and sell it to private developers.
“Christmas has come early to Charlestown,” said Pleasant Ridge resident Tina Barnes. “Finally, we can celebrate the holidays without fear of losing our homes and livelihoods.”
Tina Barnes is like many Pleasant Ridge residents—honest, hardworking and scrambling to make ends meet. She’s a medical receptionist who is raising her two granddaughters on her own. Her home in Pleasant Ridge is a duplex, which allows her grown handicapped daughter to live in an independent environment on one side while Ms. Barnes and her granddaughters live on the other.
Ms. Barnes’s family is not alone. There are dozens of veterans and elderly people living on fixed incomes sprinkled throughout the community.
“I wasn’t sure if I should put up a Christmas tree this year,” said longtime Pleasant Ridge resident Barbara Coda.
Demolishing the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood would have been illegal. Indiana reformed its eminent domain law in 2006, barring the use of eminent domain for private development (with the exception of certified technology parks).”
Institute for Justice 10 December 2014.