Civil Liberties

Reason Writers Around Town: Radley Balko Writes for Slate on Montgomery, Alabama's Contempt for Property Rights

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Over the last 10 years, the city of Montgomery, Alabama has condemned hundreds of private homes as "blighted," demolished them, then sent the home's owners a bill for the demolition. What's behind it? Over at Slate, Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko looks at the possible causes and finds the usual cozy government-developer relationships. But Balko also finds that, perversely, many of the demolished homes owned by African-Americans happen to lie along a federally-funded civil rights trail commemorating the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery.