This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 23rd, 2015. I'm Caleb Brown.

In Chicago, eminent domain threatens to break up a neighborhood. The benefits of the project, housing for students at a

largely commuter school, are less than clear. Hillary Gowans, managing editor at the

Illinois Policy Institute, talked with me about the eminent domain fight at Northeastern Illinois

University.

The Kilo decision is now more than 10 years old.

It gave us the idea that governments can, for purely economic development purposes,

seize property.

And in Chicago, this is not as cleanly a case of private development as in Kilo, but what is going on there?

Up in Chicago, we have Northeastern Illinois University, which is a public school on the

northwest side of Chicago. President Sharon Haas of that university is trying

to combat dwindling enrollment by establishing student housing.

Right now, NE IU is the only state college in Illinois that does not have student housing options.

She's arguing that the only way to fulfill this

need is to take a portion of the neighborhood, a residential and

commercial neighborhood.

So right now, the area that she's targeting

is a block of businesses that backs up to residential homes.

So she wants to take property along this stretch.

Tear down the existing thriving businesses there,

an erect apartment style housing.

Underneath which there will be commercial properties.

...