It is bad enough when the government compulsorily acquires your house for a public purpose, like building a road or railway line. Sure, the government will hopefully pay a bit more than the going market rate for the property. But people’s lives are often tied up in their homes. The price on offer, though above the going rate, would not be a price some of those owners would accept without the underlying threat of force.

The owners pushed out might be able to console themselves that, at least, it was all for the good of the country. But that gets a bit harder to do when the government turns around and hands the property over to a developer to build strip malls or apartments.

The Productivity Commission’s 2015 report, Using Land for Housing, suggested compulsory purchase as a promising way for city councils to accumulate small parcels of land for larger redevelopment. Individual owners of small lots in lucky locations can overplay their hands in negotiations with developers, ultimately blocking redevelopment. And so compulsory purchase can look like a useful tool.

George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin wrote the book on American eminent domain powers for private redevelopment. When a public interest veneer allows public takings for private profit, the consequences can be rather unfortunate – and especially so for communities that have a harder time making their voices heard at city planning meetings.

But things in America have started turning. Many states now restrict cities’ use of eminent domain so it is harder to use eminent domain powers for private redevelopment.

And there are alternatives to compulsory purchase.

Here in New Zealand, one prominent businessman reports that he got his start in development decades ago by buying options to purchase promising sites, then selling those bundles of options to the supermarkets that were then starting up. This kind of option contracting is hardly new and is surely preferable to forced sales. But it requires that Council zoning be flexible enough to allow development in different places.

Some lessons are better learned through others’ experience. America’s experience with public takings for private redevelopment is not one New Zealand should wish to replicate. It would be particularly disappointing for New Zealand to take up an American practice just as America starts turning away from it as being just a bit too draconian.