Eminent Domain and Fair Market Value in a Depressed Real Estate Market (2014)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

45 where an eminent domain program was used within the past 10 years; the Federal Housing Administration from guaranteeing mortgages within counties where an eminent domain program has been used in the past 10 years; and the United States Department of Agriculture “from making, insuring, or guaranteeing mortgage loans.”520 FHFA suggests that the use of eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages could lead to redlining and violations of fair housing laws if only certain areas of a community are targeted.521 However, supporters of the eminent domain program suggest that it is FHFA that would be redlining. That is, FHFA would prohibit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from lending in communities that use eminent domain to acquire mortgages, communities that tend to have large numbers of underwater mortgages and large low- income and minority populations.522 XI. PAYMENT OF RELOCATION EXPENSES A. Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies for Federal and Federally Assisted Programs Act Some commentators argue that the best compensatory scheme to preserve homeowner status is the URA.523 First, the URA requires federal agencies to attempt to acquire properties by negotiation rather than by condemnation.524 Second, the URA is an example of a congressionally approved “form of super- compensation for takings of one class of personal 520 Defending American Taxpayers from Abusive Government Takings Act of 2012, H.R. 6397, 112th Cong. 521 FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY, General Counsel Memorandum, Summary of Comments and Additional Analysis Regarding Input on Use of Eminent Domain to Restructure Mortgages, at 4, available at http://www.fhfa.gov/webfiles/25418/GCMemorandum EminentDomain.pdf?n=22097. 522 Pamela Lee, Eminent Domain: The Debate Dis- tracts from Pressing Problems, The Urban Institute, Housing Finance Policy Center, at 12, available at: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412937-Eminent- Domain-The-Debate-Distracts-from-Pressing- Problems.pdf. 523 Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies for Federal and Federally Assisted Programs Act of 1970, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4601-4655 (2000). 524 42 U.S.C. § 4651 (1), (4), (8). property.”525 “[T]he URA expressly permits the condemning authority to provide compensation beyond the statutory limits.”526 The Act provides assistance to property owners for a variety of costs, such as moving expenses, mortgage costs, and a replacement payment designed to ensure that homeowners are provided with comparable post-taking housing. Such post-taking housing is required to be “decent, safe, and sanitary, adequate in size to accommodate the occupants, functionally equivalent to the acquired property, and located in an area not subject to unreasonable adverse environmental conditions.”527 B. State Laws Authorizing Payment of Relocation Expenses Some states also may authorize the payment of relocation expenses. In Georgia, a displaced condemnee may recover, inter alia, “actual reasonable” relocation expenses for an owner’s home or business to move a reasonable distance from the condemned property, as well as other expenses authorized by statute: In addition to the types of relocation damages permissible under law, any condemnee that is displaced as a result of the condemnation shall be entitled to: (1) Actual reasonable expenses in moving himself or herself, his or her family, business, farm operation, or other personal property within a reasonable distance from the property condemned; (2) Actual direct losses of tangible personal property as a result of moving or discontinuing a business or farm operation; (3) Such other relocation expenses as authorized by law; and (4) With the consent of the condemnee, the condemnor may provide alternative site property as full or partial compensation. In Illinois, except when federal funds are available, a condemning authority must reimburse displaced persons’ reasonable relocation costs as determined under the URA.528 In Minnesota, the acquiring authority is expected to secure federal financial participation 525 Serkin, supra note 62, at 741. 526 Godsil and Simunovich, supra note 31, 984 (citing 42 U.S.C. § 4626(a)). 527 Id. at 983-84; see also Fegan, supra note 49, at 281 (footnotes omitted). 528 735 ILCS 30/10-5-62.