Donald Trump, Eminent Domain, and the Widow's House

Three weeks ago I wrote in the Guardian about Donald Trump’s years-long effort to use eminent domain to take Vera Coking’s Atlantic City house, along with two nearby small businesses, in order to build a limousine parking lot for his Trump Plaza hotel. Coking’s house may not have been paradise, but as Joni Mitchell would say, Trump wanted to pave it and put up a parking lot. Today the Washington Post splashes the story of the billionaire and the widow across the front of its Style section. It’s a story that deserves further attention. As I wrote: For more than 30 years Vera Coking lived in a three-story house just off the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Donald Trump built his 22-story Trump Plaza next door. In the mid-1990s Trump wanted to build a limousine parking lot for the hotel, so he bought several nearby properties. But three owners, including the by then elderly and widowed Ms Coking, refused to sell. As his daughter Ivanka said in introducing him at his campaign announcement, Donald Trump doesn’t take no for an answer. Trump turned to a government agency – the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) – to take Coking’s property. CRDA offered her $250,000 for the property – one-fourth of what another hotel builder had offered her a decade earlier. When she turned that down, the agency went into court to claim her property under eminent domain so that Trump could pave it and put up a parking lot. Trump consistently defended his use of emin...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs