eminent-domain-being-abused

If it’s called “Eminent Domain” is it Okay?

Just about everyone knows that under a process called eminent domain, the government can (and does) seize private property for public use – to build a road, a school or a courthouse. 
But did you know the government can also seize your land for private use if they can prove that doing it will serve what’s called “the public good”? 

Cities across the country have been using eminent domain to force people off their land, so private developers can build more expensive homes and offices that will pay more in property taxes than the buildings they’re replacing. 
Under eminent domain, the government buys your property, paying you what’s determined to be fair market value. 
But now, people who don’t want to sell their homes at any price – just to see their land go to another private owner – are fighting back. Correspondent Mike Wallace reports on this story, which first aired last fall.

Jim and Joanne Saleet are refusing to sell the home they’ve lived in for 38 years. They live in a quiet neighborhood of single-family houses in Lakewood, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. 

The City of Lakewood is trying to use eminent domain to force the Saleets out to make way for more expensive condominiums. But the Saleets are telling the town, “Hell no! They won’t go.”

“The bottom line is this is morally wrong, what they’re doing here. This is our home. And we’re going to stay here. And I’m gonna fight them tooth and nail. I’ve just begun to fight,” says Jim Saleet. 

“We talked about this when we were dating. I used to point to the houses and say, ‘Joanne, one of these days we’re going to have one of these houses.’ And I meant it. And I worked hard.”

Jim Saleet worked in the pharmaceutical industry, paid off his house and then retired. Now, he and his wife plan to spend the rest of their days there, and pass their house on to their children.

But Lakewood’s mayor, Madeleine Cain, has other plans. She wants to tear down the Saleets’ home, plus 55 homes around it, along with four apartment buildings and more than a dozen businesses. 

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