When is your private property not really your private property?

When the government says so, of course!



Montgomery, AL residents are being told to demolish their homes per a local blight ordinance. If they refuse to do so the local government is coming in with bulldozers and then sending the homeowners the bill. If the homeowners are unable to pay the bill, the government is seizing their land and selling it at auction.

abcnews did an article on this phenomenon:

Many of the homes and apartment buildings already torn down are located just blocks away from the sites of some of Montgomery's proudest moments in the civil rights movement, including the bus stop where Rosa Parks was arrested and the final stop in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery.

"This is what freed all of us, so it should take care of the people who stayed here in Montgomery," Jones said of the city. "This district should be a historic district, actually. It should be trying to be preserved and revitalized."