New Guide to Help Spanish Speakers Save Their Homes and Businesses: Institute for Justice, 8/23/07

Spanish-speaking communities across the country now have access to the most effective strategies to fight eminent domain abuse -- the forcible acquisition of property by the government for private development. The Castle Coalition's new Spanish language version of its popular -- and award-winning - Eminent Domain Abuse Survival Guide, the Manual de Supervivencia contra el Uso Abusivo del Dominio Eminente, provides Spanish speakers with the same strategies and tactics that home and small business owners nationwide have used for years with great success to keep what they own.

The Manual de Supervivencia is especially useful in explaining the concept of eminent domain abuse, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was constitutional two years ago in Kelo v. City of New London. This translation helps navigate threatened property owners through the eminent domain process, giving readers to tools they need to fight back. In addition, it provides Spanish speakers with the English vocabulary they will encounter as they defend their property. The Manual de Supervivenciais available at http://www.castlecoalition.org/Espanol.

"In the past, the Spanish-speaking population has had limited access to the vital information necessary to save their homes and small businesses from eminent domain abuse," said Steven Anderson, director of the Institute for Justice's Castle Coalition. "With the Manual de Supervivencia, those days are now over."

This publication is particularly timely because many of the states that received low or failing grades in the Castle Coalition's 50 State Report Card have large Spanish-speaking populations, like New York, New Jersey and California. Additionally, as Justice O'Connor predicted in the Kelo decision and as the Institute for Justice's Victimizing the Vulnerable: The Demographics of Eminent Domain has proved, minorities remain the most likely victims for eminent domain abuse. The Manual de Supervivencia is yet another tool to empower the politically weak against the strength of local governments.

"With this translation, we are not only providing a new tool for home and small business owners facing the abuse of eminent domain, we are moving ever closer to ending the practice altogether," Anderson concluded.

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Institute for Justice: http://www.ij.org