
Columbia University vs the little guy - cwan
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/columbia_vs_the_little_guy_1Kx7nuGlUH2Pzvc4mwGvhK
======
lambda
This article uses language which far overstates the case, and ignores many
facts. For instance, it claims that the government is "seizing" the land,
which indicates taking property without compensation; eminent domain, however,
requires paying fair market value for any land taken (it's basically just an
offer to buy your land that you can't refuse). The article uses incorrect
terminology ("public domain" when "eminent domain" is meant, though it uses
the correct term later). The article sets up strawmen, like the politicians
who denounce property rights, without ever quoting any politicians as actually
denouncing property rights.

The article tries to position Columbia University as a big bad meanie, only
catering to the rich and wealthy; while Columbia is a large institution with
considerable resources, it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and while it does have
many rich and well connected students, it also provides need-based
scholarships so that anyone who gets in will be able to afford it regardless
of their financial status. For many less well-off students, top tier and Ivy-
league schools can be more affordable than lower tier or state schools, as
there is much more need-based financial aid available.

Now, I disagree strongly with eminent domain being used to buy land and resell
it to private for-profit developers. For an educational non-profit like
Columbia, it's more of a grey zone. Using language like "seize" and implying
that Columbia is a big rich bully doesn't really help to clarify this
situation.

~~~
BrandonM
> eminent domain, however, requires paying fair market value for any land
> taken (it's basically just an offer to buy your land that you can't refuse)

If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain
in order to force the sale? I don't see how this can ever be considered OK. If
you want to buy someone's land and they won't sell it, you offer them more.
You get creative and offer to help them relocate their business.

How do you determine "fair market value," anyways? The land and the building
on it might be worth like $800,000 according to a property appraiser, but that
completely ignores the value of the business. They're going to have to get new
property elsewhere and build similar facilities; this will almost certainly
cost more than their existing property is worth. So you're forcing a business
to eat the cost of relocating, and they're losing revenue during the
relocation, and this is fair how?

You can't _make_ people do anything, you can only give them incentive to do
what you'd like them to do. In a fair system, that incentive is a compensation
package that works for both parties. It's not getting the government on your
side to use force as the incentive.

And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price,
_you freaking change your plans._ I don't understand why we should accept the
idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others,
for no other reason but money and clout. Although the article wasn't the most
well-written, I think it did a good job of conveying that idea.

~~~
lambda
> If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent
> domain in order to force the sale?

Because without something like eminent domain, someone with a relatively
worthless piece of property can inflate the value of it by holding an entire
project hostage in exchange for their piece of land. If I have land that I
ordinarily couldn't sell for more than a hundred thousand, but I know that the
government will be doing a multi-million dollar project, I might demand a half
a million for my land, in order to make a nice profit at the taxpayer's
expense.

Now, this case is in more of a grey zone than that. It's not at the taxpayers
expense, but at the expense of a private, non-profit institution. I'm not sure
how I feel about that; it's certainly less objectionable than using eminent
domain for a for-profit developer, but still makes me uneasy.

Even more troubling, however, is the fact that if you check other sources on
this story, such as Columbia's own daily paper
[http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-
court...](http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court-will-
not-hear-manhattanville-eminent-domain-case) , you find that part of the
reason the neighborhood has been determined "blighted", which is necessary for
the justification that it's in the state's interest to buy the land and sell
it to someone else, is that Columbia has already bought up many of the
buildings in the area and left them abandoned. If that claim is true, then it
certainly is outrageous to grant eminent domain on that basis; it means that
any private developer who wants to gobble up land can just destroy the
neighborhood, both driving down prices and allowing them to use eminent domain
to buy up any remaining land.

The strident populist rhetoric in the New York Post article originally linked
to is a bit misplaced. But given a bit more research, I'm inclined to agree on
this particular case that there's something pretty rotten going on here.

> I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have
> more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money
> and clout.

The idea is that the city or state has an interest in cleaning up blighted
neighborhoods; there are serious risks of crime, public health, land value,
and the like with property is allowed to decay. When that really is the case,
there is an argument for the government having the power to buy up whole
blocks at a time in order to redevelop them (it is very difficult to
impossible to fight blight a bit at a time, since no one wants to move in next
to an abandoned building filled with squatters or drug dealers). However, it
should not be the case that a private developer can cause blight buy buying
and abandoning land, and then using that as an excuse to get the rest of the
land through eminent domain.

~~~
tptacek
The area in question was not thriving before Columbia began buying the
property on the open market. It's not fair to suggest that Columbia engineered
entirely the conditions of that real estate.

~~~
blahedo
But it doesn't matter whether they engineered it or not---if the fact of them
buying up land, and thereby blighting it further, gives a boost to their
eminent domain claim, then this creates a moral hazard and perverse incentive
for _future_ developers who want to eminent domain some land.

~~~
eftpotrm
While I agree with the general thrust of this, I'm not entirely sure what they
could have done better. Deliberately blighting an area to drive down prices
and increase their chances is clearly not on, but when they've been clearly
establishing a pattern of purchasing pockets of land with a long-term view to
collecting them together for a grand scheme, should they really be required to
let them out until they have the full compliment to avoid the appearance of
blighting? This seems equally unreasonable; they are purchasing development
plots as fast as they can and (within reason) should surely be allowed to
treat them as empty development plots until commencement to maximise their
chances of speedy success?

------
lftl
One of the few things to be proud of in Alabama politics, is that we
immediately passed an amendment that disallows the use of eminent domain in
situations where the property will pass to a private owner.

~~~
lanstein
"Thank God for Mississippi"

------
ams6110
_The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred
as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to
protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence._

John Adams ([http://press-
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s15....](http://press-
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s15.html))

~~~
eftpotrm
_The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government
is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains._

Avram Noam Chomsky

~~~
javert
Wow, Chomsky got something right! I couldn't agree more.

See, that's a good thing. Stalin and Hitler tried seizing property "for the
majority."

~~~
eftpotrm
Actually I just put up the quote as a counterpoint.... I'm sure we can find
better refutations that don't invoke Mr. Godwin.

Regardless though, my core point in this is that the sanctity of private
property within real estate isn't an unqualified good; as a very firmly
limited resource with impacts on us all, there are surely times when it is
right that the common good override the individual claim, with truly fair
compensation for this violation.

~~~
javert
_there are surely times when it is right that the common good override the
individual claim, with truly fair compensation for this violation_

Can you give examples? The only one I can think of that is _potentially_
convincing is for building highways.

~~~
eftpotrm
Well, I'm coming from the UK where space pressures are rather higher than
average in the USA. But:

* Airports - Heathrow Airport had a proposed runway addition recently, as a very busy and overcrowded airport and piece of critical national infrastructure. There's only so many places one can build a runway in relation to the existing site and a new development elsewhere would need to be far, far larger to provide anything like the same level of service.

* Roads and railways. There are frequently only so many paths one can choose to avoid building a line that meanders so much as to both hugely increase its construction costs and vastly reduce its usable speed, rendering their construction largely pointless.

* Infrastructure such as power stations, waste disposal etc. Many if not most communities want to have them as far away as possible and can help facilitate this by blocking the sale of the land as well as introducing blocks on development permissions. We surely all agree that they need to be _somewhere_ though, and clearly we can't all have them as far away from us as possible - there is sometimes a need to impose development on a location becase all need its services but none want to host it.

One of the core issues here is the difference between very crowded limited
resources (such as Manhattan real estate) and the rather more open, available
real estate situation across more of the USA. What might well be an
unreasonable claim in an area where there was a significant amount of
available land can surely be judged differently when there are such harsh
constraints on availability, particularly when one owner is in a position to
use their property to hold the larger entity to ransom because both parties
know there's nowhere else it can go. That is surely the very definition of an
unfair market.

~~~
javert
Thanks for such a detailed (and intelligent) response to a question that I
think most people wouldn't take seriously (although I meant it seriously).

* Airports: How much is it really going to help to build one more runway? What about when another runway is needed, and another after that? The best thing to do is to plan for the airport to take up an enormous amount of space beforehand, and probably, in this case, to build another airport. (NYC already has three, but I only know of two in London off the top of my head.)

* Roads and railways: I think this is the "most difficult" one to deal with. I think it helps to have a more accurate definition of property rights than what most people operate with, which is to say, it's only your property if you actually use it--otherwise nobody is impacting you if _they_ use it, which is the whole point of property. For example, I don't think people should be allowed to "own" large, empty tracts of land. (This would be the common problem with building roads and railways in America.) And if you want to build new roads in a heavily urbanized area, I think that's just a bad idea... I mean, that's never really necessary, unless you want to _increase_ the human density of that particular area (which it self is never really necessary). Also, there are options like building underground and building multi-story highways.

* Infrastructure: The examples you're giving (power plants, waste disposal) are just discrete "points" in the map that don't have to be physically in any one particular place, as long as they're in the general area. Surely someone in a large area will be willing to sell you a plot of land. (If not, just build the infrastructure further out.)

Your point about density of USA vs. UK is a good observation, though I don't
think it really changes the principles.

A lot of times American libertarians (I'm not one, FYI) talk about limited
government, and their opponents immediately say things like "What about roads?
Roads only work if the government builds them, and has eminent domain." I
personally don't agree with the latter point of view on roads - but, in
general, I don't think it's really an argument worth having. There are more
important things to argue about, such as defending property rights _in
principle_. But for a principle to be valid, it has to always be valid. So
when I argue about eminent domain, I do so to save property rights, not
because I acutally think eminent domain is particularly important compared to
so many bigger issues in our culture today.

~~~
eftpotrm
Heathrow is _hugely_ crowded; as I understand it has an activity level far
higher than any other airport with two runways. They lobbied _very_ hard for a
third, but it was ultimately shut down by a change of government. However, it
wasn't really built in the right place (for the long term; it was fine then
and for many years afterwards) and as a consequence there simply isn't
anywhere to build another runway that doesn't require compulsory purchase of
large areas - have a look at the maps if you're curious. One could say that
they should have bought more land to give them more long-term capacity, but it
did open in 1946 so I think a substantial degree of foresight would have been
required! Its (constrained) runway length dates back to 1970, its core
terminal location was designed on the premise that car parks were unnecessary
because passengers would be being delivered by their chauffers. The world has
moved on a lot.

As for building another airport - there's already (in rough descending order
of size) Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton and London City also serving London, but
none really has the critical mass to take over and all have separate
constraints of their own, plus the road and rail infrastructure that currently
links Heathrow with Central London would need duplicating on any of them.
Actually, critial mass is the key issue here - Heathrow is a regular hub
airport for a lot of routes. That simply wouldn't be an attractive proposition
split over multiple sites.

Roads and Railways: We're currently seeing a lot of debate about the expansion
of high-speed rail, very viable in Britain with our travel plans but much
later adoption than the rest of Europe and the population density in Britain
makes it very hard to find a route. The first line (to the Channel Tunnel) was
bitterly opposed on every possible route and the subject of a lengthy fight,
the second (initially London to Birmingham, then up the west coast) is faring
little if any better. Look at a map; the line must be relatively straight if
it's to work for high speed trains and must feed into existing terminal
stations, but Britain is both crowded and far from flat. There are only so
many routes....

Infrastructure - I suppose that is more of a general 'Not In My Back Yard'
problem, a depressingly familiar attitude. Heathrow was cited beforel it's not
long opened a fifth terminal (for two runways remember) and the planning
enquiry for that had so much resistance that it took four _years_ to complete.
For a fifth terminal at an existing large airport that's 64 years old. Power
stations (fossil fuel and nuclear requiring transport infrastructure for fuel
supply and maintenance, renewable requiring large amounts of land), waste
incinerators or dumps, high speed rail that by definition must go through
areas it cannot serve or the station frequency would be too high - we all want
their amenity in general, but somewhere else. The population density of
England is too high to put everything 'somewhere else' though - we sometimes
need powers to force development to ensure it happens anywhere.

Or for a fictional example. In a UK radio soap opera, there was recently a
story where two rival property developers clashed. One set up a large scheme,
obtained the sites, set up all the details - then discovered at the last
minute that there was a previously unknown problem with the access to the site
from the area they had been planning to use. Enter developer two who had
bought a tiny parcel of land when he was what was starting, and which was now
the only viable means of access to the site. Valueless land otherwise, yet he
held the entire development otherwise to ransom. Now, in this sort of case
compulsory purchase isn't available in the UK (and rightly so), yet he was in
a position to ask for a vastly inflated sum because he became the keys to the
whole project. Compulsory purchase stops that from being possible and requires
all parties concerned to be fair with each other.

I wholeheartedly agree that forced sale should be a last resort and to be
avoided wherever possible. If something is considered a vital piece of
infrastructure though and there simply aren't available alternatives, I would
rather have the option available to force a reasonable, fair and transparent
deal through than to allow development to be held to ransom or flat vetoed by
a single individual.

------
jwhitney
It sounds like a real pisser for the owner of the businesses, but it's hard to
take the article seriously when it's so loaded with populist sneering. The
first line is the giveaway: "We often hear politicians and pundits denounce
property rights" -- do we really? I don't know if I've ever heard a US
politician explicitly _denounce_ "property rights" as a broad category. It
isn't necessary to keep harping on the broader issue -- just tell the story
and it should be clear whose rights are being violated, if any.

------
jimmyk
I don't know any details not given in the article, but one would think the
Supreme Court would welcome the opportunity to rectify their previous decision
on eminent domain. Or perhaps they're hoping everyone has forgotten that the
land taken in that particular case remains a giant sand lot and don't want to
bring it up again. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London>

------
iwwr
So private universities now have the authority of eminent domain to exercise
"architectural vision"? This is theft of land.

------
presidentender
I have one philosophical law which governs my behavior and the behavior of my
idealized society: no rational agent should ever use force against another.
Private property law can't be derived from that, but it's a useful secondary
axiom for avoiding the use of force.

The court's decision in this case does mean that force has been used against
the property's owners.

~~~
eftpotrm
While I hate to quote the underlying societal philosophy of _Starship
Troopers_ (ahem....) -

 _And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all
other authorities are derived._

We legally compel all sorts of actions. We obey these compulsions (in theory
at least) because we know that if we don't we risk being forcibly compelled to
comply or forcibly restricted in other ways, such as fines or imprisonment. I
applaud your motives but rationally there is an underlying, implied force
behind a great many actions between us.

------
javanix
If true, this is by far the most intelligent article I've ever read from the
Post.

------
forgotAgain
A couple of things that are left out of the story:

\- The area in question is blighted. This isn't an old area like SoHo is old.
Think of the worst images of New York City from forty years ago. Think of the
Charles Bronson vigilante movies from the 1970's.

\- If you've been to a top school in the past few years you know that they've
been involved in an arms race of building facilities. If you want to be a top
university in this country you need to be able to attract the top faculty and
students. You need the infrastructure. In NYC this is almost impossible given
the cost of real estate and overcrowding. Columbia isn't doing this as a
capricious act. It needs to expand if it is going to survive as a premier
university. This isn't being done to build luxury dorms for rich undergrads.
This is being done to provide new research and teaching facilities so that a
two hundred fifty year old university can continue into the future.

\- The businesses in question are the last in the area. Over the last ten
years or so there has been a lot of back and forth between the university and
its surrounding neighborhood. Some of it Columbia should be very embarrassed
(perhaps even ashamed about) but after much squabbling the businesses in the
article are the last holdouts. There is a lot being given back to the
community by Columbia to make up for taking a larger part of the neighborhood.
This includes cash payments, new schools, new community centers and housing
for those displaced.

\- The businesses in question were offered payment much in excess of what
their properties are worth. The warehouse company was also offered a swap for
real estate in a much more desirable location in the area. It agreed to the
swap and then reneged on the deal.

The situation sucks but it's the world we live in. It's almost impossible for
an institution to grow in the center of a major urban area. At the same time
those institutions must grow if the urban area is to remain vibrant for its
citizens going into the future. All things considered I think Columbia has
been getting a raw deal in the condemnations like the one in the NY Post. It's
easy pickings for the paper to rile up it's readers but in the end it only
hurts the city as a whole.

I'm not part of Columbia but my wife is an alumni and my daughter is a current
student there.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
> It needs to expand if it is going to survive as a premier university.

How is it in the public's interest that Columbia be a premier university? If
their top faculty leaves to teach elsewhere, they'll still be teaching.
Students will receive their educations. Columbia does worse, other schools do
better. No net loss.

------
yardie
This is the the same New York City where the main industry is the transfer of
wealth from the working class to the rich right?

So why am I not surprised when the courts do exactly that?

------
pslamnp2
legalized plunder

