Rhode Island town seizes family’s land in eminent domain scandal
A shocking eminent domain scandal is unfolding in Johnston, Rhode Island: Last week, the Town secretly took possession of a family’s 31-acre property, only notifying the owners afterward in a letter demanding they “remove all vehicles and other personal belongings from the property immediately” or they’d be served with a no trespass notice.
“I was presented with a piece of paper that says I don’t own a piece of property that’s been in my family for generations,” Ralph Santoro, one of the landowners represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, said at a March 19 press conference. “I got to be honest with you, I’m still digesting and processing. I can’t get over that.”
Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena, Jr. publicly vowed to “use all the power of government that I have” to stop the Santoro-Compagnone family from building an affordable apartment complex on their property. He threatened to take the property by eminent domain, then claimed the Town would build a municipal “safety complex” on the site.
PLF attorney Kady Valois told media this week that the safety complex was merely a “pretext” to take the property. “The mayor came out and said that he didn’t want this project and that he would use eminent domain before he ever said anything about building a municipal complex,” Valois pointed out. “We think that they’re just trying to come up with a reason to actually take the property.”
PLF worked with local co-counsel in Rhode Island to help the Santoro-Compagnone family file a lawsuit on March 10 in federal court challenging the Town’s plan to seize the property. That’s when the Town started moving quickly behind the scenes: It quietly transferred the land title to itself on March 12, only informing the family and their lawyers two days later on March 14 (with a letter to the landowners’ local counsel and an abrupt mayoral tweet).
“When we found out that this project was going to be taken from us by eminent domain last Friday, it was like we were physically assaulted,” Ralph said. “I felt like someone had punched me in my gut.”
What the mayor is fighting to block
Ralph, his wife Suzanne, his sister Lucille, and longtime friend Sal Compagnone run a homebuilding company that was started by Ralph and Sal’s fathers. They’ve built hundreds of homes in Johnston. “We’re a family of builders,” Ralph said. “We’ve been building all our lives.”
On their 31-acre property (which their fathers started buying decades ago), the family group plans to build 252 apartments available to renters who make less than 80% of the median income in Johnston (currently, less than $62,950). This kind of affordable housing is desperately needed in Rhode Island: In a recent survey, 78% of respondents said there weren’t enough homes to rent or buy that average people could afford in the state.
“My grandson just became a teacher this year,” Sal said at the press conference, “and he can’t afford a $600,000 house. But he can move into one of these apartments, and that’s what we’re hoping for.” (According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary for an entry-level teacher in Rhode Island is $52,587.)
But Mayor Polisena wants only owner-occupied, single-family homes built in Johnston, a town of 30,000 about 15 minutes outside of Providence. To Mayor Polisena, the family’s building plan is “destructive” because it would bring renters to Johnston. He told reporters that rental apartments are not reflective of the “American Dream.” (Providence, by the way, is home to Brown University and seven other colleges, whose graduates are precisely the kind of young professionals the Santoro-Compagnone family hopes to have as tenants.)
“We want to provide affordable homes for people,” Ralph said. “We visualize professionals—young professionals starting off on their life—living in these homes until they can move on to their American Dream.” Single-family homes in the area are too expensive for those young people, he pointed out. “The homes would be $600,000 or $700,000 and above. And that’s not a starter home for anyone.”
Ralph rejected characterizations of the family as wealthy developers who don’t care about Johnston. “We work with blood, sweat, and tears every day,” he said. “My father came from Italy with nothing. He taught us this was the greatest place to live.” The group learned from their fathers how to manage buildings. “We have tenants that have been with us fifteen, twenty years,” Ralph said. “We know our tenants by their first names.” When Sal’s father was alive, he drove by the group’s properties every day. “If there was a piece of paper on the ground, if there was a blade of grass that was not cut, it was done.”
The family’s ambitious building plans for the 31-acre property are something their fathers would have been proud of. “Here we see our fathers’ dream and we can’t get there,” Sal told reporters. “That’s what hurts.”
Winning a temporary restraining order
Mayor Polisena is hardly the only government official with a bias against new apartment buildings. Journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson were on Bari Weiss’s podcast this week to promote their new book Abundance, which talks about local resistance to new housing. “You are not the party of working families if the places you govern are not places working families can afford to live,” Klein said on the podcast.
If you have the lawn sign that says kindness is everything and no human being is illegal, and it’s in front of a house in an area zoned for single families, then no, you do not actually believe any of that. You just like the lawn sign. Your politics, as I’ve put it, are symbolic but not operational… People’s politics are full of hypocrisy. They don’t like things to change right around them.
In Johnston, officials are even willing to abuse the power of eminent domain to prevent change.
After the Town transferred the Santoro-Compagnone family’s land title to itself, Pacific Legal Foundation filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the Town from kicking the family off their property. Our motion described Johnston’s actions as “municipal thuggery” and “a shocking series of machinations.” The court held a hearing on March 18 and the next day issued a written order granting the motion to restore the Santoro-Compagnone family’s ownership and title. A hearing is scheduled for April.
Meanwhile, Mayor Polisena hasn’t budged from his position. “We remain committed to advocating for the best interests of the current residents of Johnston,” he said in a statement. “I have no intention of succumbing to these developers or their elitist, California-based legal organization.”
When asked at the press conference about the mayor’s opinion of PLF attorneys, Kady Valois was unbothered. “He doesn’t have to think about me or care about me. I care about my clients. That’s the whole reason why we filed this lawsuit. We believe in our clients’ property rights.”
