A flood of foreclosures in neighborhoods, cities and towns can cause
everyone's real estate equity to plunge. Some towns would like to step-in to
protect their communities, but they can't get the mortgage notes written
down to affordable levels for contractual reasons. The solution: use eminent domain
to claim the properties for the municipality, then renegotiate them on
behalf of struggling homeowners. Ellen talks with the pre-eminent
legal mind behind the emerging eminent domain stratagem, Cornell professor
Robert Hockett, whose idea has been catching on in towns across America, including
some of the biggest.
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