InfoHive – Eminent Domain

Where: Arizona

What: HB 2001 (2020 | AZ)

How long has Arizona prohibited AirBnB bans? Since 2016

What arguments are lawmakers in support of the repeal?

• investment groups are buying properties for short-term rental use
• “pricing out Arizonans”
• creating housing shortages
• neighborhoods are becoming businesses
• no one intended for this to happen
• return to local control

The Center Square Arizona | First Arizona bill for upcoming session seeks to repeal Airbnb law

What: the Institute for Justice has asked SCOTUS to review WOODCREST HOMES, INC., v. CAROUSEL FARMS METROPOLITAN DISTRICT,

Why? A developer formed a special municipal district, legally under state law, and then exercised eminent domain

What’s the private property right at issue? Whether eminent domain can be used by a private entity for the private entity’s benefit.

The Neighbor | Libertarian law firm asks SCOTUS to consider Colorado eminent domain case

Where: Tulsa OK

What project served as the catalyst for this private property rights group? A drainage proposal that the group believes disguises a redevelopment plan

Private Property Rights Group moniker: Save the Pearl Coalition

What end result does the group want? For the project to be prohibited from using eminent domain.

Institute for Justice | Save the Pearl: New Group Formed to Oppose Tulsa Development Authority’s Eminent Domain Plans

Where: San Antonio TX

What: Resolution opposing a pipeline’s use of eminent domain

What legislative changes are in the mix?

• No pipelines over the environmentally sensitive regions
• Give landowners and communities a stronger voice and more input for pipeline routes

Houston Chronicle | San Antonio becomes latest city considering anti-pipeline resolution

Where: Pennsylvania

What: PA’s Supreme Court ruled that a person may take by adverse possession land that is owned by a city

Is there anything unusual about the property?

• It was taken by eminent domain
• Nothing was built on the property
• The City did not maintain the property

The Court’s rational:

• Cities should have ” limited responsibility to monitor their properties at some point during the twenty-one-year prescriptive period”
• This will “promote the goals of municipal efficiency and the active and efficient use of the land by motivating municipalities to either use the retained property for the public benefit or sell it to the private individuals”
• If the city sold the property, the property could be “taxed for the municipality’s and the public’s financial benefit”

Obermayer | Whose Land is it Anyway? Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules that Municipalities are Now Subject to Claims for Adverse Possession

Where: Wyoming

What legislation? Draft legislation by WY Rep. Yin

How is the tax levied?

• On Property that is vacant 6 months or more per year
• Flate fee
• 5% of revenue stays with county
• 95% goes to the state Property Tax Refund Program 

Policy Supporting argument: This incentivizes more housing in the community by encouraging renting vacant houses

Have other cities tried this? YES

• Vancouver say a 15% decline in the vacancy rate
• Paris raised the tax rate on vacant homes

Jackson Hole News | Empty house? It could cost you

Where: Texas

What’s the issue: Senate Committees, Natural Resources and Economic Development Committee and Water and Rural Affairs Committee, will study ” the balance of private property rights and continued improvement in oil and gas infrastructure”

What can we expect? Recommendations that “ensure stability between private property owner protections and emergent oil and gas infrastructure.”

Why? Like other areas of the Country, Texas landowners and pipeline companies are at loggerheads over siting pipelines

Where: Washington State

What: a 2018 law that allows cities to require lenders to maintain properties that are in foreclosure

Why? To limit the number of blighted properties

Fairmont News | Fighting the blight of vacant buildings

Where: Storey County, NV

How did this come about?

• The owner of the Mustang Ranch is a developer at the Industrial Park
• This same person is also a Water District Commissioner
• This person signed development agreements as both the developer and the water district representative
• All employees of the Water District work and live at the brothel

The governance issue with the water district: Simultaneous Public and Private Benefit

Nevada Independent | For years, a public water district blurred the line between business and government — with a developer’s brothel workers at the helm

How did Houston based eminent domain uses catch pop culture? Eminent Domain is featured in Houston soul group, The Suffers, video for “Everything Here”

What other policy issues are included with eminent domain in this pop culture moment? Immigration & police brutality

Why? “But we have had friends who have lost their homes to eminent domain ’cause they didn’t have the same power as bigger developers. You never see how hard these people are working or what their backgrounds are and what happens to them once the cameras go away. So we wanted to present an insider view.”

Billboard | The Suffers Channel Grief, Frustrations Into ‘Everything Here’ Video: Premiere