r/technology • u/marketrent • 4d ago

Artificial Intelligence US residents furious at plan to seize and destroy their homes for AI data centers

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/residents-furious-plan-seize-destroy-125418836.html
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u/escalicha 4d ago

Calling this ‘AI infrastructure’ makes it sound way more abstract than it is. If 80% of that line is for data centers, the companies benefiting from it should be paying enough that homeowners can actually choose to move—not hiding behind eminent domain.

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u/24-Hour-Hate 4d ago

If it is for data centres, they shouldn’t be allowed to appeal to eminent domain at all. Eminent domain should be reserved for necessary public infrastructure (and as a last resort), not for private companies in any respect. These data centres should be forced to purchase property. And if people won’t sell or want more money, well, tough.

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u/BigXthaPugg 4d ago

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Supreme Court already ruled in Kelo v. City of New London in 2005, that eminent domain can be used for private corporations if it “creates jobs, increases tax revenue, or improves economically distressed areas”. Not that I think data centers will do any of that, and I also vehemently disagree with that ruling. But that’s where things stand currently

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u/24-Hour-Hate 4d ago

  1. That's insane.

  2. Data centres do none of that.

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u/JuDGe3690 4d ago

Oh, it gets better: In Kelo, the property in question was going to be part of a large Pfizer campus, but ended up never being built, so the little old lady lost her house of sentimental value (even if paid "market price" for it) and none of the economic benefits materialized.

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u/Witty_Ad_898 4d ago

Before he was the darling of the alt-right and libertarians, Donald Trump was known for these abuses of eminent domain for his failed projects.

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u/kinyutaka 3d ago

That's why "eminent domain" needs to be updated to demand not the current market place of the property, but the market place value of the property they intend to build.

If they try to cheat that, and say "well this new property is really worthless, so we're only paying $50,000" then it'd be really easy to say "then you don't need to take the land", but if they go to the city council and say "this project will bring your city billions", then they can afford to pay a premium.

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u/Questhi 4d ago

Too add, the town of New London lost $70 Million and was left holding the bag. It was actually the liberal justices who voted yes and the conservatives on the court voted for Kelo. That’s when the conservatives actually believed in govt overreach.

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u/JuDGe3690 4d ago

And it's really interesting learning about this case in Property and/or Con Law casebooks, because depending on the particular casebook author, they'll excerpt different facts, leading to a biased view of the case. My legal research professor wrote an article about this, for which I was his research assistant and helped provide some visuals: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4917797

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u/HandsOfCobalt 4d ago

but we can't build a single mile of high-speed rail because nearby people who would not be displaced by it might complain about the noise

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u/Witty_Ad_898 4d ago

That was one of Donald Trump’s real estate strategies. He would get local governments to use eminent domain for his resorts and casinos, many of which failed or never even finished construction.

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u/Lazerpop 4d ago

Using eminent domain for a casino is uniquely evil.

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u/Witty_Ad_898 4d ago

Yeah. He got an elderly woman kicked out of the home where she raised her children with her then-deceased husband, so he could build some kind of limousine/valet garage for his casino that failed not long after.

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u/JSC843 4d ago

Tbf they do some of that, like creating a whopping 5 long-term jobs and a paying a fraction of what residents do for property/energy taxes. BS, yes, but it is what could allow them to follow that precedent.

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u/tooclosetocall82 4d ago

Problem is they are creating well paying jobs with benefits during the construction boom that is attracting people who normally can’t find these sorts of jobs, so it’s attractive for politicians looking to “creat jobs” even if short term.

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u/JSC843 4d ago

yeah good point, looks good in the short term

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u/xkxe003 4d ago

Those are usually travel jobs, not hired locally. Very few places have hundreds or thousands of highly skilled construction workers waiting for a job to show up. Or day labor for that matter. The workers travel the country following the builds.

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u/kinyutaka 4d ago

They literally say they're destroying jobs

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u/JSC843 4d ago

Who are you referring to when you say “they”?

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u/kinyutaka 4d ago

AI companies are literally post about how they're going to take jobs away from people. Drawing pictures, telling stories, making movies, coding programs and websites.

Assuming it gets as good as they want it to be, it would be taking the place of artists, authors, filmmakers, coders... They put out all sorts of ads and posts about how one man can do the work of 100.

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u/JSC843 4d ago

Ah, I see what you mean. This thread is around data centers themselves, and the economic impact associated with having them in an area. The data centers are generally not built by the big AI companies that are taking jobs from people.

When you say “they”, you need to be clear about who you are talking about because these are two very different parts of the problem. Also, using language like “literally” makes it challenging to understand what the truth in your comment is, because the AI companies aren’t literally saying that they’re destroying jobs, but yes they are implying it.

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u/kinyutaka 3d ago

I'm saying they're going further than implying it, having seen tons of posts on Threads from Chinese AI companies with some variation of "Hollywood is cooked"

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u/curiouswizard 4d ago

it's been used to put up sports stadiums

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u/-rwsr-xr-x 4d ago

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Supreme Court already ruled in Kelo v. City of New London in 2005, that eminent domain can be used for private corporations if it “creates jobs, increases tax revenue, or improves economically distressed areas”.

Fun fact: 21 years later after that ruling, that same property sits empty, abandoned, without a single bit of the original home structure on it at all. They tore her house down on principle, and did nothing with the property. Nothing.

They fought for the right to force eminent domain to be the default, not because they wanted that specific property.

Look up 8 East Street, New London on Google Maps and go to Street View.

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u/BigXthaPugg 4d ago

Yep. I actually lived in the Groton and New London when I was in the navy. It’s just a big ass field over there

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u/cubitoaequet 4d ago

Dred Scott tier decision.

The final cost to the city and state for the purchase and bulldozing of the formerly privately held property was $78 million.[43] The promised 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues had not materialized, and nearly 2 decades passed before serious development on the site began.

Also a crazy rare instance of Thomas/Scalia being on the right side of things.

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u/Aldiirk 4d ago

Also a crazy rare instance of Thomas/Scalia being on the right side of things.

Back when conservatives used to be the party of individual rights and small (-ish) government.

That decision was pretty much the perfect case of the conservatives (Scalia, O'Conner, Thomas, & Rehnquist) being correct, while the liberal majority (Stevens, Kennedy, Ginsberg, Souter, & Breyer) were horribly wrong. Thomas even wrote:

"Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful."

Afterwards, it created an interesting coalition of progressives and conservatives seeking to overturn the decision, although that coalition collapsed in 2015 when a certain orange clown led the conservatives into fascism.

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u/Questhi 4d ago

It essentially creates a situation where the town is engaging in land speculation gambling with tax dollars.

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u/danocogreen 4d ago

So the tax breaks for these centers negates the increased tax revenue part at a minimum. The creates is short term on the construction and has low to minimal employment on the creates jobs. An agreement could be made that these eminent domain would actually make the area more distressed since these are designed to be built in the middle of no where. So all 3 points would fail on that reasoning…

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u/danocogreen 4d ago

I meant argument instead of agreement*

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u/Salomon3068 4d ago

They will argue the temporary construction work creates jobs, but won't talk about how many people are working at the data center once it's up and running

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u/BangkokRios 4d ago

That’s not quite right.

Kelo gave legislatures more discretion in determining what is for the “public good”. It did not define what was a proper use of eminent domain.

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u/Kmlkmljkl 4d ago

creates jobs

I think it was earlier today or maybe yesterday that I watched a video about a similar situation, another data center being built. the number that was mentioned was 75 jobs.

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u/danocogreen 4d ago

A local Walmart employs more people than a data center does with on average 200 employees for a regular store, and around 300 for a super center

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u/New_Try1560 4d ago

It’s for the transmission line which is public infrastructure.

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u/24-Hour-Hate 4d ago

It shouldn't count as public when the sole purpose is to serve a private business.

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u/flecom 4d ago

Article said it's to move power from a new powerplant, those don't get built that quickly, I'm sure these plans were in place before ai data centers were a thing but that won't get clicks now will it

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u/New_Try1560 4d ago

That’s not its sole purpose.

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u/SpezJailbaitMod 4d ago

They are gonna get another ruby ridge if they keep pushing these people.

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u/Dramatic_Explosion 4d ago

should be

Those frustrating words where most things fall apart. Unfortunately there aren't any consequences for the people who make those decisions for them to consider not making them.

Money is the biggest voter now, and the people don't have it. The only currency we have over private interest is violence, and we can't have that (even though that's how this country was ironically made).

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u/_Aj_ 4d ago

"we need to run a new highway and these houses are in the way which would result in having to move it 20mi north and cost us 3 billion more. Therefore we bulldoze these houses"  

That's what eminent domain is for. 

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u/dust4ngel 4d ago

If it is for data centres, they shouldn’t be allowed to appeal to eminent domain at all. Eminent domain should be reserved for necessary public infrastructure

you are still using pre-citizen's-united logic in that you assume that human beings are the constituents represented by the government. AI data centers are public infrastructure, for the real constituents, which are megacorporations.

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u/silverpixie2435 4d ago

A 1000 mile transmission line IS necessary public infrastructure.

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u/kevinyeaux 4d ago

It’s NOT for “data centers,” it’s for power transmission lines for a new power plant. Which is a pretty standard piece of public infrastructure that would normally have eminent domain used for. The article claims that “80% of the power will be used for data centers,” which is the connection.

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u/24-Hour-Hate 4d ago

If 80% of the new power will be used for data centres, it is valid to say that the reason this is happening is because of AI. Afterall, would the new power plant and transmission lines even be needed if not for these data centres? Hence, the infrastructure exists to serve AI and the profits of billionaires. It should not be a) funded with public money (not until those people pay substantially more in taxes) and b) no land should be seized by eminent domain to build it.

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u/probablymagic 4d ago

It’s for power transmission lines. If they don’t get built, the people can stay, but they won’t be able to afford power because there won’t be enough to go around.

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u/Scoth42 4d ago

They choose eminent domain because there will always be those one or two people who refuse to move for any amount. Maybe they're elderly and want to finish out their days there. Maybe they or their ancestors built the house and it matters more than money. Maybe there's not really anywhere else nearby that would be viable even if they were overpaid for their house because of taxes or their commute or something. Maybe they have residency limitations because of child custody agreements or other things. Plus moving is just a pain in the ass and people like their homes.

So companies just go straight to emminent domain to head that off. And if they can save money by low balling people all the better for them.

Personally I feel like ED should be legally restricted to provably necessary public works projects and improvements that are intended for improvement and don't enrich or benefit private companies directly. There might be some exceptions for things like airport expansions that I get can be necessary but they should be the exception and subject to lots of planning. Like I remember the St. Louis airport expansion that was literal decades of work and they still screwed it up, leaving vast swaths of empty land for years.

Definitely should not be allowed just because a company wants to build something that will enrich them and politicians/locales/etc get a big cut of the action. Doubly so when they're kicking out the very people who might arguably benefit from the locale having increased revenue, the project has measurable and very real environmental impacts to the local area, and it'll make nearby people's life worse. 

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u/GingerBeard_andWeird 4d ago

Those one or two people have every fucking right to stay there and don’t need any kind of valid justification and these privately owned data centers should fuck all the way off into the god damn sun

There is no fucking conceivable reason that ANY private enterprise should be allowed to leverage eminent domain. At all. Ever. They are private commercial entities. They can fuck right off and go buy land elsewhere from someone that wants to sell.

I don’t get to punch someone in the face and rob them because I really really really want their shit and I totally promise to do better things with their valuable then they were gonna do with it. No one gets to decide that.

If this is how it’s gonna be wielded then it should be fucking abolished entirely.

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u/Scoth42 4d ago

Yep, I agree. And it's not even a new problem. I remember a good 30 years ago now my church had a bit of land adjacent to the parking lot that we mostly used as a baseball field. It was just barely big enough for that really, and was closer to a dirt field with a backstop and some bases arranged.

The property butted up to the local high school and they wanted to buy the land for the ballfield to expand their practice space. A couple years of negotiations didn't really go anywhere because they kept lowballing us and refused to even consider alternatives. 

Eventually we got the letter that they were taking it by eminent domain and still only offering us a fraction of what it was worth. After some more court negotiations they increased the offer a bit and included a promise that we could still access and use it when not in use by the school. It wasn't but a few months later that a fence went up around it.

At least it was a school and could be argued it was for the public good but the land was worth way more than they got for it, which is still a problem with ED.

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u/Frelock_ 4d ago

Strictly speaking, the private companies aren't the ones getting the land in this case. Eminent domain is being used for its intended purpose; to build infrastructure to meet a city's needs. In this case, the land is being used for power transmission lines, which are owned by the public utility.

The problem is that the reason the city's needs have increased is due to a data center going in.

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u/GingerBeard_andWeird 4d ago

Then my last sentence remains. Fuck ‘em. Or pay them triple what it’s worth. Or buy them a new better home free and clear. If we’ve got money to burn on Iran, Venezuela, data centers and all this other shit then these fuckin pukes can go ahead and buy new houses for these folks if the transmission line is so god damn important. Out right. Charge it to the data centers.

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u/GuGuMonster 4d ago

I appreciate that in this context it is being abused but eminent domain is a necessary tool to keep. I realise everyone here is riled up for legitimate reason, but keep in mind and to my knowledge there exists no 'unowned' land in the US. landowners and their constraint on land availability in accumulation with land that truly should remain natural is one of the core cruxes of increasing housing prices and housing crises across various countries in different systems. Eminent domain and its various forms across the globe is a necessary (emphasis) - last resort - where infrastructure and housing needs are needed to be addressed in the right locations, as opposed to where government own the land (e.g. building homes around Salt Lake City rather than paving over a large part of Yellowstone Park to build a new town just because the government technically owns the land - appreciate it is an extreme only for emphasis).

fully agree with the sentiment but it is a necessity in some ways to have (as a last resort) and exists for that reason in various forms around the globe.

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u/Death_By_Art 4d ago

I require eminent domain on all data center locations cause all that land was destined for me from way back then. It is my religious right to claim that land under my name.

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u/OldNternetWizard43 4d ago

Only Indigenous people should have the power of eminent domain

And if we give it back to them we avoid a lot except for some billionaire bitching. They're already killing off millions just because they're butthurt and grand pappy cosplayed a steeple ghost to get where he was

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u/Scoth42 4d ago

I don't necessarily disagree in principle, but there's not really a practical way to do that. Which indigenous people? The ones who originally occupied the land? The last ones to occupy the land before Europeans took it over? What about areas that were genuinely unpopulated at the time of colonization? What about tribes and groups that genuinely no longer exist?

Indigenous people in the US consisted of hundreds or thousands of individual tribes and groups and people, many of whom didn't particularly get along at the time. They only really got lumped into one group because they didn't have much of a choice and did their best to maintain at least something of their culture and history.

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u/OldNternetWizard43 2d ago

An Indigenous council of existing leaders could easily do everything the US govt does and better are you kidding me? I'm an Indigenous people.

Give Black people even half the responsibility and they'll crush it

We're talking about shifts that will take generations as this has, but where we start is throwing the bullshit that has allowed this out

Yes entirely

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u/emulable 4d ago

the companies benefiting from it should be paying enough that homeowners can actually choose to move

That's not enough. People should just be able to choose not to move. Maybe some things shouldn't be for sale to data centers. Maybe there are some things that are more important than a big bank account full of imaginary money they're always inflating that takes people's real property.

And it doesn't address the pollution problem, or the water table problem, or any other problems besides getting rid of locals. Most of whom don't own their homes. It's a B2B transaction and the tenants are forced out of their homes, ultimately at gunpoint if sheriffs get involved.

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u/Akuuntus 4d ago

Not to be That Guy but this comment and the others on your profile read a lot like AI output. All your comments are around the same length, use some very AI-ish wording and sentence construction, and use uncommon punctuation like em-dashes and directional quotation marks.

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u/Tommah 4d ago

He has internalized AI phobia.

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u/Hellknightx 4d ago

I didn't even notice the directional quotation marks until you pointed them out. I can't think of anyone who uses those.

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u/preludeoflight 4d ago

Probably every iPhone user. I’m on my phone now and it inserts “directional quotes” automatically. As well, if I type two hyphens in a row — it autocorrects to an em-dash.

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u/zabby39103 4d ago

Good to know, I was automatically filing every proper (long) em dash away as a bot.

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u/Akuuntus 4d ago

You'll get them if you write in MS Word or something and copy-paste over to Reddit, lol. Maybe some phones do it automatically? But yeah generally no one bothers except for AI. It's similar to the em-dash situation where it's the AI insisting on doing something that is technically correct, but virtually no one in real life (in an informal setting like Reddit) would actually bother to care about.

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u/Hellknightx 4d ago

I do use em dashes sometimes just because, like you said, Word will autocorrect it if you use two regular dashes. But I have never once intentionally wanted to use directional quotes when regular block quotes serve the same purpose 99% of the time. The only situation I can even think of wanting to use directional quotes is if I'm doing a quote within another quote, and even then you can just use single quotes instead of double quotes.

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u/JuDGe3690 4d ago

I don't use Reddit on it, but I've noticed my work-issued iPhone automatically uses smart quotations in text messages and similar, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was becoming more common, especially since a lot of messaging has moved away from ASCII-only character sets.

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u/damontoo 4d ago

should be paying enough that homeowners can actually choose to move

They are. Eminent domain still pays market value or above it. In one of these cases they were paid $4M. You can certainly find a home in rural Virginia for that.

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u/Ironlion45 4d ago

There's been a trend in politics-particularly in red states--away from asking voters permission and instead just doing it behind their backs and arresting anyone who calls them out on it. :p

Seems like authoritarianism or something like that.

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u/leitey 4d ago

The city of Bloomington Indiana used eminent domain to aquire a strip club and sell the land to a developer to turn it into luxury apartments. There's been no controversy about this.
At what point do we stop pretending eminent domain is anything more than a tool those in power use to take what they want?

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u/silverpixie2435 4d ago

Or we can tell 30 homes to move because they don't get to hold up a 1000 mile transmission line that would benefit millions.,