Issues → January/February 2007 → Feature Stories →
A House Divided: Eminent Domain in Connecticut
(page 4 of 6)
Still flush with the new turns in her life, Kelo brought a sense of optimism to the Tuesday-morning meetings she and her neighbors held in their kitchens in response to pressure from the city to sell their homes. Once assembled, they'd parcel out tasks -- fliers, posters, letters to the editor -- and strategize over mugs of coffee.
"I thought things were going to work out," says Kelo. "I really did."
In January 2000, after the city delegated its power of eminent domain to the NLDC, the pace of the turnover picked up. Two appraisers assessed properties and offered owners the higher of the two amounts. One by one, Fort residents gave in. Bulldozers began knocking down buildings that spring. Those who remained recall the dust and noise as houses crumbled and their neighbors moved away.
On the day before Thanksgiving of that year, a sheriff affixed a letter to Kelo's door: Her home had been condemned by the city of New London and the NLDC. She would be given $128,000 in compensation (a little more than twice what she had paid), and she had to be out by March. A few blocks away, on Goshen Street, the same thing was happening at the Cristofaro residence, only in this case both of the elderly Cristofaros happened to be home when the sheriff arrived. According to their son Michael, the news was so upsetting that his mother began having chest pain and had to be taken to the hospital.
Bill Von Winkle, who was living in the Fort and was also a landlord there, recalls another unpleasant moment: "They kicked in the doors and woke people up," he says of the effort to empty his buildings of tenants after he refused to evict them. "Afterwards, they nailed the doors shut and put padlocks on the front. The police had to come and let everyone back in."
In mid-December, the Institute for Justice -- a libertarian law firm based in Arlington, Virginia -- agreed to represent seven families, including Kelo and the Cristofaros, in a suit against the city. Together, the plaintiffs owned 15 houses and businesses. "We got involved because what was going on was an outrageous abuse of power," says Scott Bullock, who argued the case. "There was so little respect shown for these people. The city wanted to take an entire neighborhood and make it anew. They were not willing to compromise."
By 2001, the NLDC had acquired about 80 buildings and demolished most of them. The trial began in July of that year in New London Superior Court. Bullock argued that the city had violated the law by subverting the process of eminent domain from providing for the public good (with entities such as schools, roads, and bridges) to creating profits for private developers. Bullock maintained that economic development, implicit in the MDP, did not qualify as public use.
In March 2002, the court ruled that four plaintiffs had the right to remain where they were but that the city could take four properties near the waterfront for redevelopment. Neither the city nor the property owners were happy and sought to have the decision overturned.
One night in late 2002, Susette Kelo was working in a hospital emergency room when a man critically hurt in a car accident was rushed in by ambulance. It was only after working alongside the rest of the medical staff for some time that Kelo realized the man was Tim LeBlanc. For two weeks he remained in a coma, and he was hospitalized for two months.
Kelo came to love her neighborhood even more while her husband was at home recovering from his disabling brain injury. "I don't know what I would have done without them," she says of her neighbors. "They took care of Timmy while I was at work. He'd go up the street to make Italian sausage and meatballs with the Derys, or Billy Von Winkle would come take him to a flea market and out to eat. I'll never find people with that kind of character anywhere else."
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