O/T

You guys are not going to believe this one. I sure couldn’t.

Imagine you come home from work one day to a notice on your front door that you have 45 days to demolish your house, or the city will do it for you. Oh, and you’re paying for it.

This is happening right now in Montgomery, Ala., and here is how it works: The city decides it doesn’t like your property for one reason or another, so it declares it a “public nuisance.” It mails you a notice that you have 45 days to demolish your property, at your expense, or the city will do it for you (and, of course, bill you).

The city has even demolished homes that still being built!!

Consider Jimmy McCall. Jimmy was in the process of building from the ground-up a home for his family when he was notified it was slated for demolition. After one failed attempt to bulldoze the half-completed home, the city came back under this state law and got what they were fighting for: Jimmy’s would-be dream home was demolished, and he was stuck with the bill.

Of course, it almost goes without saying that most of the home owners are African Americans…

The end game in Montgomery, however, is obvious. The city wants to clear and ultimately sell-off the property of lower-income, mostly black Alabamans to higher-income developers, but it can’t do that through the state’s eminent domain law. So it found a backdoor, which also incidentally does not require the city to compensate property owners for their loss, but instead charges them.

I have a feeling that none of the Tea Party types in Washington DC this weekend to listen to Beck step on Dr Kings legacy will in any way give a shit about this.