California county will likely return beach to Black descendants

In 1924 the city of Manhattan Beach, in Los Angeles county, used eminent domain to seize a privately owned beach from a black family. The black family was paid fair market value at the time, $14,125.
The family had originally purchased the beach for $1,225.

The original family is now long dead, of course, but the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has now voted unanimously to return the beach to the family's descendants (only the grandchildren are still alive). This is due to a public outcry that taking away the property from them was racist.

So now to "right past wrongs", the county wants to return the beach. The Los Angeles county board of supervisors voted unanimously 5-0 to return the beach to the family's descendants.

There is one small catch though and that is before the beach can be returned, the state of California has to pass a law granting a special exception to approve the transfer, something which is likely to happen.


The beach is now in an area considered prime real estate and probably worth about $72 million.

There are numerous large very expensive houses packed right up adjacent to the beach, and some of the homeowners might not be happy about the beach returning to private hands and no longer being a public beach.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/b...rned-to-descendants/ar-BB1fRT6j?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.becauseofthemwecan.com/...-go-back-to-descendants-of-first-black-owners


Some additional past history, it is true that Willa and Charles Bruce were forced to sell the property for racist reasons. The couple had made the beach into a sort of resort specifically for black people, and the man that had sold them the beach, George H. Peck, was developing the adjacent plots and allowing them to be sold to black people. At that time, the city of Los Angeles was informally divided into east and west, with black people living in several areas in the east part. There were many people who wanted to keep it that way. The beach resort was attracting too many black families to build homes near the beach, so the community got the city to force them to sell the beach, condemning the beach and several properties in the surrounding area. The city tried to lease the land to a private buyer to create a white-only beach, but the NAACP got involved and eventually the courts overturned the beach's condemning, and it opened again to the public.


It's highly doubtful that the descendants would be able to pay the property taxes, at the current going rates, on that beach property. If it is given to them, it would be almost certain they would decide to immediately sell it. And very likely it would be the county would be the one buying it back from them.
So in reality, we're really not talking about giving the beach back to them, we are talking about giving the family $72 million of county taxpayer money as "reparations".


If anyone is curious, the amount that the city originally compensated them for the taking of their property, $14,125 in 1924 dollars would be the equivalent of $218,795 today.

This certainly isn't the only couple who had their property taken from them by eminent domain. There are countless others, most of which were not for racist reasons, but not all of those were for good reasons.
The property was taken 97 years ago. One wonders if this is too late to try to "correct" a mistake.

 

This looks like an example of how to turn a 72 million dollar beach into a ghetto parking lot.

 

Let's be bluntly honest about this. There is no way to do it but we could speculate how it might turn out. What if all blacks were handed 5-6 American states to live in. No whites allowed and they would democratically determine their own immigration laws. Everybody knows what would happen. They would be third world pockets of hell with inferior economies, health care and schools.

Remember Chaz or Chop? The first thing the hypocrites did was place barriers to keep outsiders out.

 

Update:

The state Legislature approved a bill in September that removed state restrictions on the beachfront property, to allow the county to transfer the property to descendants of the Bruce family. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill September 30, 2021, appearing at the Manhattan Beach property with members of the Bruce family and state and county officials who steered the bill through the Legislature.

The county Board of Supervisors approved a state grant deed modification that clears the way for the county to transfer Bruce's Beach to the Bruce family.
The board directed the county CEO in October to work with staff from the Treasurer and Tax Collector's Office to identify and vet potential claimants. The county also needs to determine with the family how to transfer the property in a way that eases the property tax burden on the descendants when they take possession.

 

My guess is most people think that this family should just be left out of luck. That even though it was wrong ( although im sure some dont even think that ) to force them from their property, they should just have to live with the fact that they got screwed over big time.

 

Who knew that Los Angeles county had $72M to waste? Seems the good citizens of the county might want to do an audit or two.... As for the rectification of eminent domain, hasn't the SCOTUS already made several rulings on this? As in, no remedy to those effected by it? Why does the city of Los Angeles feel that suddenly, they are above the law of the US? More, are they going to investigate the thousands of cases where city of LA or country of LA have used eminent domain every time they made the freeway more usable? Racist? how about simple graft. Make LA justify all of their past acts. For any reason. See what happens.

 

I love it when people use hypotheticals to explain their racism.

 

Update:

The beach has been officially handed over to the family.

Now the county will lease the land from the family for $413,000 a year.

So in other words, nothing has really changed, but now the surviving ancestors will get $413,000 each year from the county.

(There is also a clause in the contract giving the county the option to purchase the beach back in the future for $20 million)

Bruce's Beach returned to family nearly a century after seizure - BBC News, David Molloy, June 29, 2022

 

Now that's justice.

 

I do not think so.

Even if you think that the descendants should have received some compensation, what they ended up getting in this situation was absurdly excessive and ridiculous.

Remember, the original owners who had their property wrongly taken from them were given fair market compensation at the time.

 

They had no choice.

 

How about the descendants first be required to pay back that $14,125, with normal interest, to account for those 97 years.
That would be fair, wouldn't it? After all, the Bruce family could have taken that money they got and put it in a bank, or used it to make investments.
At 4%, that would work out to about $634,000.

And let's be realistic. It is likely the Bruces or possibly their direct children would eventually have sold their beach, before it reached the high value it has today, 97 years later.

Further evidence of this is shown by the fact that the current descendants now seem to prefer a payout of money rather than actually running the property as a private beach like the Bruce family did.

Would the local county government be giving these people this money if their ancestor was White? We all know the answer is probably not.
That county is not doing this for every family who ever had their property taken away by imminent domain. This is all about race, trying to "right" a 97-year-old injustice that was racist - apparently mostly due to the fact that it was racist, and not so much just due to the fact of it being an injustice.

 

All that matters is they are £72m richer. It's only money at the end of the day

 

They'll all be driving Bentleys with big rims now...

 

Sound investment

 

Sure... If you like destroying the fuel economy the handling and the front end of a vehicle.

 

Right

 

$14,125 in 1924 dollars would be the equivalent of $218,795 today.

How about tell the descendants that they can have their beach, but first they have to pay back $218,795, and they are not allowed to sell the beach to anyone else, and they will have to pay property taxes on their new property, at the going rate that everyone else who lives there has to pay.

See if they still want the beach then.

 

It is right.

 

Of course

 

~ I do not like Eminent Domaine law. I believe the process is greatly flawed in many ways. George Bush #2 made it easier to abuse this authority.
As far as I am concerned all property seized by Eminent Domaine should be returned — or the estate compensated monetarily.

 

'Fair market value' is not a high enough reparation for taking someones land. In cases where its absolutely necessary that land be taken for public use, the public should pay totally out the wazoo for it. It should hurt the public coffers enough that the alternative is always preferable, so its only done when there is no alternative. Being imminent domained should be like winning the lottery.

Its just too bad that people only seem to care about imminent domain when its racist. We can hope this is just the first in a long trend of returning many peoples' land who were given 'fair market value' for something right before its value 'just happenned' to skyrocket. But I get the feeling this is just more 'govt is only bad when its racist.'

 

~ Well said. Forfeited property owners should have an improvement in their situation — not an inconvenience.
"We the people " tolerate Government overreach too easily and too often.

 

I can see that argument, but it is totally out of proportion to what happened in this story.
I can see the argument that maybe the government should have to pay 15 or maybe even 30 percent above market value to confiscate someone's property. That's not unreasonable.
But in this story, not only was the Bruce family given fair market value, but now the government is giving the grandchildren the equivalent of almost TWICE the original fair market property value EVERY YEAR.
Anyone with any common sense has to admit this is unreasonable.

Why does it seem the Progressive Left wants to turn everything into a massive lottery payout, to right all wrongs?

 

Well this money is about racism. Fighting 'kkknazis' and such. Not about property rights.