Housing and Slum Clearance Bleeds into Economic Development
The Big Picture
Our Progressive approach to economic development, as discussed initially, was based in large urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest–and driven by immigrants and Great Migration migrants and second wave of industrialization in our larger cities. Our present Progressive housing-slum clearance–urban renewal tale starts in the 1880’s and, in this chapter, ends with the Great Depression and 1932 victory of the FDR Progressives. In the meantime, the post-1929 crushing effects of the Depression and the collapse of the financial system had obviously played out; the negative effects of both were obviously huge, widespread, and left in their wake an emerging political consensus that demanded immediate and radical solutions–solutions that required the involvement, if not leadership of the Federal government. A good deal of the next several chapters will, therefore, discuss the entry of the federal government into sub-state economic development and urban policy as well. A page in our nation’s history is about to turn.
As it unfolds in the following section of this and over the next several chapters, our urban renewal story is primarily led by big city Progressive coalitions and actors and the semi-Progressive-FDR New Deal. The pre-New Deal story starts with Progressive housing advocates, realizing that the solution to urban big city housing inadequacy and insufficient supply meant increasing the scale of housing reform–from the individual unit and family to blocks and then to entire slums. The pressure of concentrated Black Great Migration emigrants settling into the older, low housing value neighborhoods, most of which were adjacent to the CBD created physical deterioration and a white population exodus which at the time was labeled “blight”. In this initial period when the Great Depression and the Great Migration combined in these troubled older neighborhoods. Progressive housing and neighborhood advocated and Privatist real estate-CBD business sectors and actors developed different approaches to redressing the situation. In this chapter–and the next–these two opposing forces will struggle against each other to define the problem and then to advocate to the municipal and federal governments for financial and programmatic solutions for each of their definition-solution.
The post-war entry of the national corporate elite sector into big city urban renewal policy-making created a new urban renewal coalition, business-progressives and housing-slum clearance reformers, who together compelled Main Street Privatist business elements to play nicely in a redefined housing-slum clearance-urban renewal sandbox. That would work for awhile, through the fifties mainly–but by the end of the sixties, the national corporate elite had fled the local economic development policy scene. Ground zero of sub-state economic development was left to more Privatist CBD elites and the real estate community–the now infamous “growth coalition”. That our two approaches to economic development would compete intensely on this policy and geographic battlefield is to state the obvious–but the real lesson to be learned from our upcoming discussion regarding urban renewal is how these competing approaches also cooperated, sometimes unintentionally, and compromised to forge a shared economic development strategy and tool which, we shall argue, will dominate economic development for nearly forty years.
The Story Begins
By 1933 the big cities were in crisis and from this crisis we start down the path toward urban renewal and toward primacy of economic development as an urban public policy:
Housing starts plummeted; waves of foreclosures took place, eroding the capital position of most Americans and feeding back on the entire economic system. ….Indeed, in the decade of the 1930’s, the proportion of home owners declined dramatically and the progress of the previous decade was aborted. There was a virtual collapse of the shelter system …. Riots and lynch mobs attended efforts of banks and municipalities to foreclose property …. A near revolutionary situation was evident[1].
Harkening back to Jacob Riis, How the Other Side Live (1890) and his “Battle with the Slums” (1895)[2], the Social Reform wing of the Progressive Movement had focused upon incorporation of foreign-born immigrants into the industrial city through housing reform and slum removal as a cornerstone of their approach to the crises of industrialization and immigration. In the early years of the twentieth century, the settlement movement and the planned neighborhood had captured the focus of these reformers. With the Great Migration, and then the Great Depression, the big cities, their housing, their residents and the neighborhoods were in deep frightful crisis.
Tactically, housing reformers in the early 1930’s had two choices: (1) moderate or substantial housing rehabilitation–the latter usually means demolition and replacement by essentially new housing or (2) construction of new homes in the urban periphery (which was opposed by privatist real estate and business firms and groups). Pre (and post) 1933 municipal efforts to implement either of these approaches proved to be unfruitful, ineffective and only served to disturb and inject discomfort to the residents who often responded in less than a helpful fashion[3]. There was no instruction manual available and it was clear that something besides individual moderate-substantial rehabilitation of individual housing units was imperative.
For many years civic organizations, architects, city planners and others in Cleveland had studied the subject of slum clearance and housing for the low-income group, but never had the matter gotten beyond the academic discussion stage.[4]
Housing reformers or “public housers” in the early thirties adopted as their policy solution that sufficient scale public housing meant “projects” and “planned redistricting” (or urban renewal) would be required. The area cleared by the planned redistricting project, however, would be for housing only and some commitment to relocation of existing residents would be made. In addition, while construction of the housing would be contracted to private developers, the completed housing and the land would be retained by the Public Housing Authority. With this policy in mind, municipal housing reformers, and Progressives who supported them, advocated for new solutions from City Hall and Washington D.C. It was recognized almost immediately that municipal governments, for various reasons, were unwilling to commit all the resources necessary to implement the new housing policy-approach. A sustained federal financing initiative, however, would overcome the fiscal limitations of their municipal government (often associated with a two-thirds referendum bond approval). The National Association of Housing Officials, in existence since 1910, would be their principal federal lobby.
The Public Houser concept of district replanning, however, was not shared by the more privatist-oriented urban real estate community. As early as the 1890’s, private realtor and real estate interests organized in each reasonably sized jurisdiction a real estate board or exchange. The local real estate boards themselves formed in 1908 the National Association of Real Estate Exchanges which by 1916 had changed its name to National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) NAREB was their national lobby and industry advocate[5]. Already, the reader will sense that the page was already turning in economic development policy–even before the victory of FDR. Professions had developed over the previous twenty or thirty years and each profession formed a national and state association. As policy scaled to larger dimensions and more difficult goals, and more and more cities were growing population and problems, the federal government, grudgingly since 1920 was being called into service, mostly by states, but now by municipalities. National professional associations in this atmosphere assumed an advocacy and lobbying function in this process-transition.
NAREB and its municipal real estate membership shared a quite different perspective from the public housers. The real estate municipal business community opposed public housing in general and instead advocated for the removal of slum and blight from what central place advocates would later label the “transition zone” which was immediately adjacent to the Central Business District (CBD) of each city. These zones were perceived as truly nasty places by those who traveled through them on their way to work or shop. They were, of course, home to lots of people who had no other place to go. This last matter was not a prime concern of the real estate community. Cost minimization, profit, and project feasibility were.
During the last year of the Hoover administration (1932) at a Hoover-initiated Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, a sub-committee, “the Committee on Blighted Areas and Slums” issued a report which dovetailed nicely with NAREB’s perspective. In this report slum and blight were delinked from housing (i.e.) cleared areas could be used for any purpose and if used for housing relocation of existing occupants was not required. Finally, cleared land could be leased or sold to private firms for redevelopment in accordance with a comprehensive plan adopted by the municipality. The initial victory of NAREB over the Progressive NAHO approach obviously upset and disappointed the Progressives and when Hoover lost, and FDR won, the battle was certain to be refought.
The reader takeaway from these last paragraphs is that previous to FDR’s election and the New Deal, two separate forces (one Progressive and one Privatist) had conceptualized their own versions of what we today call urban renewal. While each big city certainly was different in its own way and politics, it does appear that in most major cities neither of the two groups was able to totally dominate the local policy-making process[6]. Upon the election of FDR, both forces turned to his administration for support. We shall continue this story, therefore, in the next several chapters.
The Core Tool behind Urban Renewal: Eminent Domain
Eminent domain is a core tool of economic development. Much of the criticism levied against urban redevelopment and urban renewal originates from its use of eminent domain. The literature surrounding eminent domain is colossally large, but fortunately for us is either legal or more “how to” ish. Neither corresponds to our purposes in this introductory textbook on the history of economic development. We are, of course, more concerned with its historical evolution. The Curmudgeon is also interested in outlining the context in which eminent domain despite its controversy became a core tool in the profession; it did so in large measure due to its centrality in the development-redevelopment process. Also of some importance in our discussion will be the need to develop organizational capacity and the necessary construction of an EDO capable of conducting eminent domain and development-redevelopment.
There is also another vast literature, however, which outlines the controversial philosophical-policy nature of eminent domain which we cannot completely ignore. This controversy is appropriate because the “taking” of private property in a democratic society is, by its very nature, confrontational, zero-sum, and winner-loser. An economic developer should never use this tool without clearly understanding that she may be in for the fight of her life. This is a process which creates an underdog, invites the accusation of abuse, and usually is conducted without benefit of knowing whether the underlying project will turn out as planned. There are lots more potential pitfalls and downsides. Eminent domain is NOT just another tool in the economic developer’s toolbox. Supplemented by this author’s own direct experience in economic development eminent domain (for better or worse, successful), it is a tool which burns and consumes both user and used.
The taking of property from one private individual-corporation and the eventual transfer of such property to another private individual is quite a serious matter. On its face government taking away one person’s private property and giving it to another private person is just wrong. While not a terribly sophisticated argument, the seemingly inherent wrongness in using eminent domain for private gain is further buttressed by an equally simple, but compelling likelihood that such eminent domain inevitably raises the suspicion that the rich are using government to become ever richer. The saddest reality is that this suspicion may be entirely accurate. Eminent domain in an urban renewal-redevelopment project is one of the most challenging and morally convoluted action in which an economic developer will engage.
Our interest at this point in our history of economic development is to better understand eminent domain in a context that it was a necessary and sufficient tool for an urban renewal program. The issue for an economic developer is that real estate-based projects need to have the designated site controlled, if not acquired, before they can go forward. Projects, ranging from affordable or public housing, slum removal, waterfront redevelopment or whatever ultimate purpose must first acquire legal control before much of any substance can be attempted. Financing, for instance, is nearly impossible without site control in hand.
The pitfalls behind site control, especially for a private developer, involve holdouts, absentee owners and unwilling sellers who can raise the price of land acquisition to obscenely high, deal-breaking amounts. In addition, some sites today are actual or potential brownfields and the owner wants no part of waking a sleeping tiger. The time and costs of site assembly-control can irreparably damage and even destroy the viability of many a redevelopment project. In a large public-oriented project, as most urban renewal projects were, eminent domain will eventually be required if the project is to move to the finance and construction phases. Without site-control and assembly powers development and redevelopment in the public arena will become little more than an academic exercise. Accordingly, the economic developer should have an understanding, not just of the process and techniques (that is not our task here, however) but the issues involved, how they were resolved, and to what degree controversy regarding eminent domain is either justified or not.
As a starting point, eminent domain, despite a federal constitutional provision (Fifth Amendment which forbids both federal and state governments from taking private property without “just compensation”), has been, with rare exceptions, a matter of state law. There are fifty-one (including the federal government) systems and processes for eminent domain. Cities and counties and other units of government can add their own provisions and strictures. Each state has its own history and precedents regulating the use of eminent domain.
In the nineteenth century, state legislatures engaged in a wide variety of practices regarding eminent domain. Western state constitutions, as they were initially approved, were especially aggressive in permitting eminent domain for the management and exploitation of natural resources. Water infrastructure and mining (oil and gas, forestry) were critical in the development of the West. In addition, transportation infrastructure, the legacy of the transcontinental railroads in particular, and its role in city-building and urban development was considered in earlier chapters. From our perspective the most outrageous aspect of eminent domain in these early years the widespread delegation of eminent domain authority to a private entity:
Legislatures in many Eastern and Midwestern states delegated eminent domain authority to private transportation and manufacturing companies in order to promote economic expansion in a country with little surplus capital. State courts generally upheld this delegation on the grounds that the needs and wants of the community at that time were served by economic expansion. Thus the companies’ use of eminent domain was for a public rather than a private purpose
.… from a very early time in the Interior West, private natural resource development took on the mantle of public use…. Courts in those states …recognized virtually no judicial authority to balance the purported needs of the private condemning authority against any countervailing economic, land use, or social concern[7]
The delegation of eminent domain to a private entity today seems incredible, but states, even in the nineteenth century, were somewhat aware of the tenuousness of this delegation. By the early twentieth century state courts tended to (1) take a broad construction on the use of eminent domain by a public actor and (2) narrow the construction of eminent domain when delegated to a private actor to instances where the taking of private property served only public purposes not private profit[8]. As the reader might surmise this is a fine line to walk in real life.
In this environment the prevailing federal opinion was to defer to the states in the matter of eminent domain. In situations where the federal courts conducted constitutional reviews of state actions relevant to eminent domain, appeal courts and the Supreme Court “gave great deference to state delegation of eminent domain authority to private actors based on the Court’s acceptance that “different states had different economic needs based on their population, natural resources, and other economic drivers”[9]. The federal government was reluctant to intervene into areas reserved to the states. That viewpoint, in light of the recent Kilo decision, seems still pertinent today as well.
Eminent domain law, as relevant to urban renewal in particular, draws its roots from Progressive housing reformers, the most pioneering of which were from New York City. In 1895, the Tenement House Act was approved by New York State allowing the City Board of Health to condemn and demolish buildings declared unfit for human habitation. Some housing reformers pressed the state to allow for private parties to redevelop the slums–they were unsuccessful.[10] It was the sad misfortune of housing reformers that their petition for the power to employ eminent domain as a private party ran afoul of very increased court scrutiny of private firm empowerment generated by the Progressive Movement (of which the housing reformers were cutting edge members).
Concerned that government support for private business would be followed by government regulation of free enterprise, many [late] nineteenth century judges invalidated attempts at private/public cooperation … courts in the late 1800’s frequently deprived corporations of public benefits, including financial subsidy and rights of condemnation …[and] were generally ambivalent toward expansive interpretations of the Public Use Clause.[11]
During the 1920’s and 30’s, however, as an urban crisis appeared in ever-increasing ferocity, public housing reformers pleaded for the power to remove deteriorated housing; and the NAREB-ULI real estate crowd lobbied for slum in blight clearance in the CBD transition zones and the CBD itself. The state, therefore, courts, dealing with a changed environment and policy context, faced new pressures to accommodate increased usage of eminent domain by a variety of new groups and policy areas.
The late 1920’s brought a convergence of forces that supported the urban renewal movement, and several groups that were formerly antagonists in the battle for city revitalization began to cooperate. Real estate interest, housing reformers and big-city politicians all hoped to reap benefits through urban renewal, and they formed a tenuous coalition to promote redevelopment. Their goals were widely divergent. Housing reformers wanted government support to eliminate decrepit housing and replace it with modern, affordable dwellings, Politicians hoped to increase their cities’ tax bases and provide jobs …to their constituents. Real estate interests sought to gain access to large parcels of downtown property for profitable redevelopment. The planning profession provided a common language that joined real estate interests, housing reformers and local government[12].
Indeed, it was planners who coined the terms slum and blight[13]. Planners conceptually distinguished between the two concepts, inspired a new emerging literature (the ecological school from the University of Chicago[14]), and then promptly lent their concepts to any who found a use for them. Guess who found a good use? Because the term was so poorly defined, blight became a useful rhetorical device–a means by which real estate interests could reorganize property ownership by separating ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ land uses. The development of the discourse of blight provided real estate interests with a means to rationalize urban land use ownership.[15]
NAREB during the 1930’s and ’40’s promoted a variety of programs to privately redevelop urban neighborhoods. The NAREB was aided in this effort by its research wing, the ULI, described by its director, Hugh Potter, as ‘the city planning department of the Realtors of this country’. Together, the NAREB and ULI used the language of planning to persuade the public to support the use of eminent domain for private redevelopment.[16]
The Great Depression especially provided the inspiration for a “reconceptualization of the Public Use Clause. In particular, there was a need to have housing and slum removal legally accepted as a public use by the state courts. This was not necessarily going to be easy thing to do. A raft of state courts very quickly rejected housing as a public use under eminent domain and the Federal Sixth Circuit Court affirmed state court decisions in that, predictably, the issue was not “within the scope of the powers of the federal government”. The (New Deal) Housing Act of 1937, however, rectified the problem by requiring as a recipient of federal housing redevelopment funds a local housing redevelopment agency.
In light of the 1937 federal Housing Act state legislatures approved supportive legislation and courts affirmed its constitutionality. New York courts led the way in reinterpreting the Public Use Clause and supported the condemnation of properties by the New York City Housing Authority[17].
The court relied heavily on the argument that slum clearance was an integral part of public housing production and declared that ‘slum areas are the breeding places of disease which take toll not only on its denizens, but by spread, from the inhabitants of the entire city and state. The elimination of these areas through the construction of public housing, the court ruled, constituted a valid public purpose.[18]
Massachusetts and other states soon followed by emulating in their own manner, the New York State decision.
The next step, which would play out during the war and post-war years, was to start a campaign to expand the narrow courts’ decision from just housing (in slums) to the removal of blight and urban renewal. To this end, the development of the comprehensive master plan by planners during the thirties provided the justification or rationale. A driving force for the creation and approval of these master plans was the Progressive Coalition (which will be more fully discussed in future chapters). In city after city, the Progressive Coalition (where it existed) advanced a conception of urban renewal which included …
a public/private partnership, a suitable redevelopment corporation, empowered with an effective, legally-sanctioned power of eminent domain which would “provide public benefits by eliminating the decrepit urban core and replacing it with a gleaming modern city. Cities across the country organized commissions to prepare blueprints for the post-World War II era. Some, including Cincinnati, Portland, Dallas and Detroit, drafted comprehensive plans for their cities… Business leaders, politicians, and planning professionals cooperated in this process, and their efforts were promoted by private coalitions of civic leaders such as the Allegheny Conference in Pittsburgh, the Municipal Housing and Planning Council of Chicago, and the Citizen’s Council on City Planning in Philadelphia. These groups were controlled by the economic elites of each city….[19]
In essence, we suggest the Progressive Coalition created defined a “program”, whose central element was eminent domain, to solve a defined set of public problems and sold it to their citizenry–and in the process created a backdrop of consensual public policy to support future court decisions. Also, there existed a very real link between comprehensive planning and its support of, and justification for, the required use of eminent domain (and zoning as well) to achieve the objectives of comprehensive planning. Any benefits to be achieved by a comprehensive plan would overcome any small disadvantages incurred by expansion of eminent domain into urban renewal. Implicitly, the consensus behind the rationalization, legal defense and subsequent enhanced use of eminent domain reflected, despite an obvious divergence in goals and purpose, a coalition of Progressive and Privatist actors:
the 1940’s renewal advocates had created a detailed program for urban revitalization. The basic tenets of urban renewal held that in order to protect property values and promote the efficient growth of urban areas, cities needed a comprehensive plan for redevelopment. The plan would designate the areas to be reclaimed and what types of projects would be built in each district. The actual development would be carried out privately, but the government would be an important partner. To keep acquisition costs down, eminent domain powers, along with government subsidies were necessary.[20]
As state legislatures across the nation in the post-World War II period approved redevelopment acts which included this expanded notion of urban renewal throughout the forties and early fifties[21], and municipalities responded by creating and initiating urban renewal programs, the courts inevitably were called upon to review various aspects of the urban renewal project–most importantly for us, the validity of the urban renewal as a legitimate public use/purpose in an eminent domain taking.
In these post-war years, Pritchett cited seventeen state courts that had reviewed and decided on various urban renewal-related eminent domain cases. All but three upheld the rights of local authorities to condemn land and turn it over to private parties for renewal purposes.[22]
The success of renewal initiatives in state courts depended on a coordinated effort of real estate interests and housing reformers. The NAREB, the National Association of Housing Officials, the National Conference of Mayors and other pro-redevelopment groups provided assistance to state and local authorities, helped to draft briefs, and submitted their own amicus curiae briefs to the courts. Courts relied heavily on these briefs in writing their opinions, and many of them directly appropriated the language of blight.[23]
Accordingly, a coalition of privatist and progressive actors re-forged, re-defined, and re-justified eminent domain to render it suitable for use in urban renewal programs. To be sure, the usual process was for the state to pass a redevelopment law, see it contested in court, and if the court review and decision were favorable urban renewal went forward. In those instances where the court’s decision was unfavorable, the redevelopment law was modified or (usually in cases where the state constitution itself made reference relevant to eminent domain) a popular referendum (in Georgia) was approved and the state constitution amended. Eventually, to our best determination, nearly every state approved and legally sanctioned some form of urban renewal–certainly by the 1960’s.
The federal Supreme Court eventually in its 1954 Berman v. Parker decision upheld the state legislation and state court decisions that affirmed public taking (in regards to a Washington D.C. taking) of private property and its transference to a private developer as part of the urban renewal process. The Supreme Court decision stated in part:
It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled …. Once the object is within the authority of Congress [the legislature of Washington D.C.], the right to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is merely a means to an end.[24]
Yikes, and specters of Kilo should come to the reader’s eyes–but more on that later. This is not the end of our eminent domain story. But this is as far as we need take it at this point in our history of economic development. The reader can expect to see eminent domain discussed yet further in subsequent chapters.
The lessons to this point are hopefully, clear. A patchwork coalition of privatist and progressive actors throughout the 1940’s and 50’s had incorporated eminent domain into their vision of an urban renewal program which was designed to positively address the urban crisis which confronted most American cities of any size or consequence. The package which was urban renewal varied from city to city, state to state[25], but did include a core “rationale”, “approach”, or “philosophy” around which a court could legitimize its decision to allow a public taking on behalf of a private action. There were important and loud critics of these decisions, even within the time period at hand, but they were not sufficient to overcome the force or the logic of this Progressive Coalition. As we shall see soon enough, however, the double-edged sword which is eminent domain will return to haunt the urban renewal proponents in the not-too-distant future.
[1] George Sternlieb, Patterns of Development (New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, 1986) pp. 6-7.
[2] Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (Kessinger Publishing, 2004) and the Battle with the Slums (New York, MacMillan, 1895).
[3] Marc A. Weiss, “The Origins and Legacy of Urban Renewal” in Federal Housing Policy and Programs: Past and Present *J. Paul Mitchell, ed., Center for Urban Policy Research, 1985. p. 256.
[4] Ernest J. Bohn, “Housing as a Political Problem”, Law and Contemporary Problems, Volume, Number 2 (March, 1934), pp. 178.
[5] Today the NAREB is known as (since 1974) the National Association of Realtors as is considered a powerful lobby force–as it was in the 1930’s as well.
[6] For example we cite an interesting assessment of Cleveland’s response by Ernest J. Bohn, former President of National Association of Housing Officials, “Housing as a Political Problem”, Law and Contemporary Problems, Volume, Number 2 (March, 1934), pp. 176-184. Bohn in frustration rails against the inability of public housers to arouse public opinion on the public housing issue and that subsequent New Deal legislation which advanced the public housing interests were justified on the need to create opportunities for employment. He also in detail outlines the local responses to Hoover’s 1932 initiatives and the early New Deal housing legislation. This is a short but very enlightening article.
[7] Alexandra B. Klass, “The Frontier of Eminent Domain”, Regulation, Summer 2008, pp. 21-22.
[8] Klass, op. cit. p. 22.
[9] Klass, op. cit. pp. 22-23
[10] Wendell E. Pritchett, “The ‘Public Menace’ of Blight: Urban Renewal and the Private Uses of Eminent Domain”, Yale Law and Policy Review, Volume 21, Number 1, 2003 pp. 7-8.
[11] Pritchett, op. cit. pp. 11-12.
[12] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 14.
[13] Mabel Walker, Urban Blight and Slums (1936)
[14] Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and R. D. McKenzie were the leaders in this new conception of sociology.
[15] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 18.
[16] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 19
[17] Pritchett. Op. cit. pp. 24-25
[18] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 25.
[19] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 27. Pritchett then describes individual cities and their campaigns to promote this overall package to the citizen and voter–creating the backdrop for inclusion into a court decision.
[20] Pritchett, op. cit. p.32.
[21] New York was the allegedly the first (1941-Desmond-Mitchell Urban Redevelopment Corporation Law), Illinois next and by 1948 twenty-five states had passed such legislation.–Pritchett, op. cit. p. 32. Pritchett in the following pages describes the essential features of several of these laws and their differences. Despite the ULI “model law” approach, each state was approaching urban redevelopment through its own perspective and balance of political and social inputs.
[22] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 38.
[23] Pritchett, op. cit. p. 38.
[24] Urban Blight: An Analysis of State Blight Statutes and their Implications for Eminent Domain Reform, by Robinson and Cole for the National Association of Realtors, October 2007. p. 5.
[25] The reader is urged to review a publication, Urban Blight: An Analysis of State Blight Statutes and their Implications for Eminent Domain Reform, by Robinson and Cole for the National Association of Realtors, October 2007. This publication outlines in nearly fifty pages the various distinctions and variations included in the fifty state laws governing eminent domain and blight. In addition, it does provide a short history of the period we have just discussed and which confirms the basic outlines of our position.
Ron W. Coan 