From IBD

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court this summer gave New London, Conn., the green light to seize private homes in the city’s Fort Trumbull area and sell them to a private developer. The developer plans to build houses, stores and offices where the homes now stand. The city claims the development qualifies as “public use” because it’ll generate more in local taxes than the homeowners will pay.
This alone is an outrage clearly inconsistent with our constitutional rights and liberties. But the barons of New London aren’t through.
Drunk with the power imbibed from the Kelo v. New London decision, they’re trying to collect back rent from the seven homeowners who fought the seizure, arguing they’ve lived on city property since 2000, the year the homes were condemned.
The New London Development Corp., front group for the city’s shakedown, is also offering buyouts based on the market rate in 2000 instead of present-day value. Given the real estate boom, the difference is significant.
Some say New London’s decrees add insult to injury. Others call them childish vindictiveness. Either way, they’re unconscionably abusive and decidedly totalitarian.
According to the Fairfield County Weekly, some homeowners in this working-class (but unblighted) neighborhood will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in back rent. Matt Dery has been assessed more than $300,000. Susette Kelo, owner of the little pink house above, says her rent will be a more modest $57,000. But she’d still have to “leave here broke,” she told the newspaper.
The city also wants any money the homeowners made from tenants who rented their properties. In some cases, the rents are the homeowners’ lone source of income.
We have to keep reminding ourselves this is Connecticut, U.S.A., not Zimbabwe, Africa, where thug-in-chief Robert Mugabe has seized virtually every white-owned farm and pushed the country near starvation.