Eminent domain: A home is more than just a house
Your Turn
Brian Unger
Guest Column

The eminent domain issue in Long Branch has pitted the city government and beachfront developers against a small working-class neighborhood known as MTOTSA (Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace, Seaview Avenue). Plans call for the modest homes in the neighborhood to be razed in favor of luxury condominiums.

To the immediate south, a several-hundred-million-dollar investment has transformed a moribund oceanfront into a bustling residential and commercial area.

I have been involved personally in this issue through a failed last-ditch effort to bring the two sides together in a compromise. In the end, it wasn’t possible — in part because of the very nature of the ideological battle lines.

Simply put, this issue pits wealthy developers, their customers and the city’s redevelopment plan against working families with few financial resources.

The argument is made that beachfront redevelopment benefits the entire city, and it does. Cities like Long Branch and Asbury Park have been waiting for decades to revive their oceanfronts.

This year’s Oceanfest in Long Branch drew over a quarter of a million people. But it’s also a question of who gains and who loses, what methods you use, and what happens to families that have invested and lived in a neighborhood for decades.

Anyone who has ever faced eminent domain realizes the utter shock of not owning what you thought you owned, of realizing that your home is more than the mere structural elements of a house, and that you can lose it against your will.

I can’t side with the developer of MTOTSA, the Hovnanian subsidiary Matzel & Mumford, whose partners will get rich on the real estate that the MTOTSA homeowners first risked their capital on.

The original homeowners will never realize the true equity earned by their investment. The developers and new homeowners will.

Some alternatives might have worked and might have made the solution of this controversy a model for the entire country. Perhaps a mixed application could have been designed consisting of existing homes, upgraded if necessary with the city’s help, and in-filled with new structures wrapped around and through the neighborhood, giving the area a more complex urban feel.

Or, perhaps a unique financial vehicle could have been explored whereby homeowners willing to sell would obtain an enhanced equity position in the development so that instead of being forced out of their investment and paid mere “market value” they retained some equity and realized additional financial gain, as the developers will. After all, they invested in the neighborhood long before Matzel & Mumford.

It’s still difficult for many to comprehend that in a “free country” like ours a government agency can force people out of their homes so that a wealthier investor can reap the fuller reward of a rising market.

The MTOTSA organization has succeeded thus far by rejecting every material offer made by the city and by aligning itself philosophically and politically with a powerful national grass-roots movement.

It is eminent domain they are intent on defeating, and state legislators around the country, including here in New Jersey, are working on their behalf.

Interestingly, the Texas Senate recently approved a bill containing broad restrictions on the use of eminent domain to spur economic development. A Republican sponsored the legislation. Democrat senators angrily opposed it. The measure, if it passes both houses of the legislature, will closely define the projects that government entities in Texas can seize private property for.

It will forbid the taking of land for economic development by a private corporation, but allow the taking of homes for a new Dallas Cowboys stadium, which the voters have already approved.

Eminent domain would still be allowed for roads, bridges, airports, water projects, pipelines, utilities and other public infrastructure.

I haven’t taken a poll, but it seems to me that most city residents applaud the new look, the new businesses, the new homes, and the new economic growth generated so far on Long Branch’s beachfront. But I also find that most city residents are very uncomfortable about bulldozing homes and forcing out fellow citizens through eminent domain.

There has to be a better way through dialogue, compromise and long-term planning, through sharing both costs and upside financial rewards, through development of a common ground that respects community, homes and private property, but which also recognizes and allows that to survive and prosper, cities like Long Branch and Asbury Park have to have new commercial and residential construction.

But families that live and work in a city should not be shunted aside, overlooked, condemned, or merely pushed out at “fair market” prices.

A strong city will be diverse, will respect all classes of people regardless of their economic, social or professional status, and will go far out of its way to include all in the city’s future.

Brian Unger is a resident of Long Branch