The District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945 is
constitutional, as applied to the taking of appellants' building
and land (used solely for commercial purposes) under the power of
eminent domain, pursuant to a comprehensive plan prepared by an
administrative agency for the redevelopment of a large area of the
District of Columbia so as to eliminate and prevent slum and
substandard housing conditions -- even though such property may
later be sold or leased to other private interests subject to
conditions designed to accomplish these purposes. Pp.
348 U. S.
28-36.
(a) The power of Congress over the District of Columbia includes
all the legislative powers which a state may exercise over its
affairs. Pp.
348 U. S.
31-32.
(b) Subject to specific constitutional limitations, the
legislature, not the judiciary, is the main guardian of the public
needs to be served by social legislation enacted in the exercise of
the police power, and this principle admits of no exception merely
because the power of eminent domain is involved. P.
348 U.S. 32.
(c) This Court does not sit to determine whether or not a
particular housing project is desirable. P.
348 U. S.
33.
(d) If Congress decides that the Nation's Capital shall be
beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing in the Fifth
Amendment that stands in the way. P.
348 U. S.
33.
(e) Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the
right to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is
clear. P.
348 U. S.
33.
(f) Once the public purpose has been established, the means of
executing the project are for Congress and Congress alone to
determine. P.
348 U. S.
33.
(g) This Court cannot say that public ownership is the sole
method of promoting the public purposes of a community
redevelopment project, and it is not beyond the power of Congress
to utilize an agency of private enterprise for this purpose, or to
authorize the taking of private property and its resale or lease to
the same or other private parties as part of such a project. P.
348 U. S.
34.
Page 348 U. S. 27
(h) It is not beyond the power of Congress or its authorized
agencies to attack the problem of the blighted parts of the
community on an area, rather than on a structure-by-structure
basis. Redevelopment of an entire area under a balanced integrated
plan so as to include not only new homes, but also schools,
churches, parks, streets, and shopping centers is plainly relevant
to the maintenance of the desired housing standards, and therefore
within congressional power. Pp.
348 U. S.
34-35.
(i) The standards contained in the Act are sufficiently definite
to sustain the delegation of authority to administrative agencies
to execute the plan to eliminate not only slums, but also the
blighted areas that tend to produce slums. P.
348 U. S.
35.
(j) Once the public purpose is established, the amount and
character of the land to be taken for the project and the need for
a particular tract to complete the integrated plan rests in the
discretion of the legislature. Pp.
348 U. S.
35-36.
(k) If the Redevelopment Agency considers it necessary in
carrying out a redevelopment project to take full title to the
land, as distinguished from the objectionable buildings located
thereon, it may do so. P.
348 U. S.
36.
(l) The rights of these property owners are satisfied when they
receive the just compensation which the Fifth Amendment exacts as
the price of the taking. P.
348 U. S.
36.
117 F.
Supp. 705, modified and affirmed.
Page 348 U. S. 28
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an appeal (28 U.S.C. § 1253) from the judgment of a
three-judge District Court which dismissed a complaint seeking to
enjoin the condemnation of appellants' property under the District
of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945, 60 Stat. 790, D.C.Code,
1951, §§ 5-701-5-719. The challenge was to the constitutionality of
the Act, particularly as applied to the taking of appellants'
property. The District Court sustained the constitutionality of the
Act.
117 F.
Supp. 705.
By § 2 of the Act, Congress made a "legislative determination"
that,
"owing to technological and sociological changes, obsolete
lay-out, and other factors, conditions existing in the District of
Columbia with respect to substandard housing and blighted areas,
including the use of buildings in alleys as dwellings for human
habitation, are injurious to the public health, safety, morals, and
welfare, and it is hereby declared to be the policy of the United
States to protect and promote the welfare of the inhabitants of the
seat of the Government by eliminating all such injurious conditions
by employing all means necessary and appropriate for the purpose.
*"
Section 2 goes on to declare that acquisition of property is
necessary to eliminate these housing conditions.
Page 348 U. S. 29
Congress further finds in § 2 that these ends cannot be attained
"by the ordinary operations of private enterprise alone without
public participation"; that "the sound replanning and redevelopment
of an obsolescent or obsolescing portion" of the District
"cannot be accomplished unless it be done in the light of
comprehensive and coordinated planning of the whole of the
territory of the District of Columbia and its environs,"
and that
"the acquisition and the assembly of real property and the
leasing or sale thereof for redevelopment pursuant to a project
area redevelopment plan . . . is hereby declared to be a public
use."
Section 4 creates the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land
Agency (hereinafter called the Agency), composed of five members,
which is granted power by § 5(a) to acquire and assemble, by
eminent domain and otherwise, real property for
"the redevelopment of blighted territory in the District of
Columbia and the prevention, reduction, or elimination of blighting
factors or causes of blight."
Section 6(a) of the Act directs the National Capital Planning
Commission (hereinafter called the Planning Commission) to make and
develop "a comprehensive or general plan" of the District,
including "a land use plan" which designates land for use for
"housing, business, industry, recreation, education, public
buildings, public reservations, and other general categories of
public and private uses of the land."
Section 6(b) authorizes the Planning Commission to adopt
redevelopment plans for specific project areas. These plans are
subject to the approval of the District Commissioners after a
public hearing, and they prescribe the various public and private
land uses for the respective areas, the "standards of population
density and building intensity," and "the amount or character or
class of any low-rent housing."
Page 348 U. S. 30
§ 6(b).
Once the Planning Commission adopts a plan and that plan is
approved by the Commissioners, the Planning Commission certifies it
to the Agency. § 6(d). At that point, the Agency is authorized to
acquire and assemble the real property in the area.
Id.
After the real estate has been assembled, the Agency is
authorized to transfer to public agencies the land to be devoted to
such public purposes as streets, utilities, recreational
facilities, and schools, § 7(a), and to lease or sell the remainder
as an entirety or in parts to a redevelopment company, individual,
or partnership. § 7(b), (f). The leases or sales must provide that
the lessees or purchasers will carry out the redevelopment plan,
and that "no use shall be made of any land or real property
included in the lease or sale nor any building or structure erected
thereon" which does not conform to the plan, §§ 7(d), 11.
Preference is to be given to private enterprise over public
agencies in executing the redevelopment plan. § 7(g).
The first project undertaken under the Act relates to Project
Area B in Southwest Washington, D.C. In 1950, the Planning
Commission prepared and published a comprehensive plan for the
District. Surveys revealed that, in Area B, 64.3% of the dwellings
were beyond repair, 18.4% needed major repairs, only 17.3% were
satisfactory; 57.8% of the dwellings had outside toilets, 60.3% had
no baths, 29.3% lacked electricity, 82.2% had no wash basins or
laundry tubs, 83.8% lacked central heating. In the judgment of the
District's Director of Health, it was necessary to redevelop Area B
in the interests of public health. The population of Area B
amounted to 5,012 persons, of whom 97.5% were Negroes.
The plan for Area B specifies the boundaries and allocates the
use of the land for various purposes. It makes detailed provisions
for types of dwelling units, and provides that at least one-third
of them are to be low-rent
Page 348 U. S. 31
housing with a maximum rental of $17 per room per month.
After a public hearing, the Commissioners approved the plan and
the Planning Commission certified it to the Agency for execution.
The Agency undertook the preliminary steps for redevelopment of the
area when this suit was brought.
Appellants own property in Area B at 712 Fourth Street, S.W. It
is not used as a dwelling or place of habitation. A department
store is located on it. Appellants object to the appropriation of
this property for the purposes of the project. They claim that
their property may not be taken constitutionally for this project.
It is commercial, not residential property; it is not slum housing;
it will be put into the project under the management of a private,
not a public, agency, and redeveloped for private, not public, use.
That is the argument, and the contention is that appellants'
private property is being taken contrary to two mandates of the
Fifth Amendment -- (1) "No person shall . . . be deprived of . . .
property, without due process of law"; (2) "nor shall private
property be taken for public use, without just compensation." To
take for the purpose of ridding the area of slums is one thing; it
is quite another, the argument goes, to take a man's property
merely to develop a better balanced, more attractive community. The
District Court, while agreeing in general with that argument, saved
the Act by construing it to mean that the Agency could condemn
property only for the reasonable necessities of slum clearance and
prevention, its concept of "slum" being the existence of conditions
"injurious to the public health, safety, morals and welfare."
117 F.
Supp. 705, 724-725.
The power of Congress over the District of Columbia includes all
the legislative powers which a state may exercise over its affairs.
See District of Columbia v.
Thompson
Page 348 U. S. 32
Co., 346 U. S. 100,
346 U. S. 108.
We deal, in other words, with what traditionally has been known as
the police power. An attempt to define its reach or trace its outer
limits is fruitless, for each case must turn on its own facts. The
definition is essentially the product of legislative determinations
addressed to the purposes of government, purposes neither
abstractly nor historically capable of complete definition. Subject
to specific constitutional limitations, when the legislature has
spoken, the public interest has been declared in terms well nigh
conclusive. In such cases, the legislature, not the judiciary, is
the main guardian of the public needs to be served by social
legislation, whether it be Congress legislating concerning the
District of Columbia (
see Block v. Hirsh, 256 U.
S. 135) or the States legislating concerning local
affairs.
See Olsen v. Nebraska, 313 U.
S. 236;
Lincoln Union v. Northwestern Co.,
335 U. S. 525;
California State Association v. Maloney, 341 U.
S. 105. This principle admits of no exception merely
because the power of eminent domain is involved. The role of the
judiciary in determining whether that power is being exercised for
a public purpose is an extremely narrow one.
See Old Dominion
Co. v. United States, 269 U. S. 55,
269 U. S. 66;
United States ex rel. TVA v. Welch, 327 U.
S. 546,
327 U. S.
552.
Public safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and
order -- these are some of the more conspicuous examples of the
traditional application of the police power to municipal affairs.
Yet they merely illustrate the scope of the power, and do not
delimit it.
See Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U.
S. 104,
219 U. S. 111.
Miserable and disreputable housing conditions may do more than
spread disease and crime and immorality. They may also suffocate
the spirit by reducing the people who live there to the status of
cattle. They may indeed make living an almost insufferable burden.
They may also be an ugly sore, a blight on the community which robs
it of charm,
Page 348 U. S. 33
which makes it a place from which men turn. The misery of
housing may despoil a community as an open sewer may ruin a
river.
We do not sit to determine whether a particular housing project
is or is not desirable. The concept of the public welfare is broad
and inclusive.
See Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri,
342 U. S. 421,
342 U. S. 424.
The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical,
aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the
legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as
well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well
as carefully patrolled. In the present case, the Congress and its
authorized agencies have made determinations that take into account
a wide variety of values. It is not for us to reappraise them. If
those who govern the District of Columbia decide that the Nation's
Capital should be beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing
in the Fifth Amendment that stands in the way.
Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the right
to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is clear. For
the power of eminent domain is merely the means to the end.
See
Luxton v. North River Bridge Co., 153 U.
S. 525,
153 U. S.
529-530;
United States v. Gettysburg Electric R.
Co., 160 U. S. 668,
160 U. S. 679.
Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the means by
which it will be attained is also for Congress to determine. Here,
one of the means chosen is the use of private enterprise for
redevelopment of the area. Appellants argue that this makes the
project a taking from one businessman for the benefit of another
businessman. But the means of executing the project are for
Congress, and Congress alone, to determine once the public purpose
has been established.
See Luxton v. North River Bridge Co.,
supra; cf. Highland v. Russell Car Co., 279 U.
S. 253. The public end may be as well or better served
through an
Page 348 U. S. 34
agency of private enterprise than through a department of
government -- or so the Congress might conclude. We cannot say that
public ownership is the sole method of promoting the public
purposes of community redevelopment projects. What we have said
also disposes of any contention concerning the fact that certain
property owners in the area may be permitted to repurchase their
properties for redevelopment in harmony with the over-all plan.
That, too, is a legitimate means which Congress and its agencies
may adopt, if they choose.
In the present case, Congress and its authorized agencies attack
the problem of the blighted parts of the community on an area,
rather than on a structure-by-structure, basis. That, too, is
opposed by appellants. They maintain that, since their building
does not imperil health or safety nor contribute to the making of a
slum or a blighted area, it cannot be swept into a redevelopment
plan by the mere dictum of the Planning Commission or the
Commissioners. The particular uses to be made of the land in the
project were determined with regard to the needs of the particular
community. The experts concluded that, if the community were to be
healthy, if it were not to revert again to a blighted or slum area,
as though possessed of a congenital disease, the area must be
planned as a whole. It was not enough, they believed, to remove
existing buildings that were insanitary or unsightly. It was
important to redesign the whole area so as to eliminate the
conditions that cause slums -- the overcrowding of dwellings, the
lack of parks, the lack of adequate streets and alleys, the absence
of recreational areas, the lack of light and air, the presence of
outmoded street patterns. It was believed that the piecemeal
approach, the removal of individual structures that were offensive,
would be only a palliative. The entire area needed redesigning so
that a balanced, integrated plan could be developed for the region,
including not only new homes,
Page 348 U. S. 35
but also schools, churches, parks, streets, and shopping
centers. In this way, it was hoped that the cycle of decay of the
area could be controlled, and the birth of future slums prevented.
Cf. Gohld Realty Co. v. Hartford, 141 Conn. 135, 141-144,
104 A.2d 365, 368-370;
Hunter v. Redevelopment Authority,
195 Va. 326, 338-339, 78 S.E.2d 893, 900-901. Such diversification
in future use is plainly relevant to the maintenance of the desired
housing standards, and therefore within congressional power.
The District Court below suggested that, if such a broad scope
were intended for the statute, the standards contained in the Act
would not be sufficiently definite to sustain the delegation of
authority.
117 F.
Supp. 705, 721. We do not agree. We think the standards
prescribed were adequate for executing the plan to eliminate not
only slums as narrowly defined by the District Court, but also the
blighted areas that tend to produce slums. Property may, of course,
be taken for this redevelopment which, standing by itself, is
innocuous and unoffending. But we have said enough to indicate that
it is the need of the area as a whole which Congress and its
agencies are evaluating. If owner after owner were permitted to
resist these redevelopment programs on the ground that his
particular property was not being used against the public interest,
integrated plans for redevelopment would suffer greatly. The
argument pressed on us is, indeed, a plea to substitute the
landowner's standard of the public need for the standard prescribed
by Congress. But as we have already stated, community redevelopment
programs need not, by force of the Constitution, be on a piecemeal
basis -- lot by lot, building by building.
It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary
line, nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project
area. Once the question of the public purpose has been decided, the
amount and character of land to be taken for the project and the
need for a particular
Page 348 U. S. 36
tract to complete the integrated plan rests in the discretion of
the legislative branch.
See Shoemaker v. United States,
147 U. S. 282,
147 U. S. 298;
United States ex rel. TVA v. Welch, supra, 327 U. S. 554;
United States v. Carmack, 329 U.
S. 230,
329 U. S.
247.
The District Court indicated grave doubts concerning the
Agency's right to take full title to the land as distinguished from
the objectionable buildings located on it.
117 F.
Supp. 705, 715-719. We do not share those doubts. If the Agency
considers it necessary in carrying out the redevelopment project to
take full title to the real property involved, it may do so. It is
not for the courts to determine whether it is necessary for
successful consummation of the project that unsafe, unsightly, or
insanitary buildings alone be taken or whether title to the land be
included, any more than it is the function of the courts to sort
and choose among the various parcels selected for condemnation.
The rights of these property owners are satisfied when they
receive that just compensation which the Fifth Amendment exacts as
the price of the taking.
The judgment of the District Court, as modified by this opinion,
is
Affirmed.
* The Act does not define either "slums" or "blighted areas."
Section 3(r), however, states:
"'Substandard housing conditions' means the conditions obtaining
in connection with the existence of any dwelling, or dwellings, or
housing accommodations for human beings, which because of lack of
sanitary facilities, ventilation, or light, or because of
dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty interior arrangement, or any
combination of these factors, is in the opinion of the
Commissioners detrimental to the safety, health, morals, or welfare
of the inhabitants of the District of Columbia."