Suppose that you decide to acquire a cottage on Lake Michigan to use as a summer vacation home for your family and to rent out at times when you are not planning on occupying it. You engage a real estate broker who indicates she has listings of such property for sale, and she takes you to visit one possibility. As you arrive at the property, you see that an old ship’s anchor has been embedded in concrete near the road and a mailbox welded to it. As you look over the cottage, you note that old hurricane lanterns have been wired to serve as light fixtures both outside the entrances as well as in the interior, and artifacts taken from ships have been attached to the walls. The property has a dock that extends into the lake; while you are looking out at the lake, someone arrives in a motorboat, ties it up at the dock, and then walks across the property to an adjacent cottage. As you and the agent retire to the local village to discuss over a cup of coffee your making an offer on the property, your eye is drawn to the headline in the local paper that someone left in the booth where you are sitting. It indicates that the mayor is proposing that the village exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire some “substandard” cottages along the lake and resell the property to a developer interested in putting up an “upscale” condo that would produce greater tax revenues for the village.
1. Under what circumstances can the government take private property?