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“Boston's turned out to be everything we would have hoped it would have been,” said OceanFirst CEO Chris Maher.
Margaret Collins has provided expert witness support for a number of successful law suits challenging municipal zoning ordinances that seek to eliminate nonconforming uses. She is an authority on uses and abuses of the Amortization Technique, by which cities seek to eliminate non-confoming uses without compensating owners by presenting accountancy arguments to demonstrate that the owners have recouped their investment in nonconforming buildings.
Her experience encompasses suits filed under the Fair Housing Act challenging zoning actions that target the redevelopment of low income and minority neighborhoods and threaten to displace their residents.
She has prepared expert declarations, reports, and given testimony at depositions for the following cases:
Baymeadows LLC v. City of Ridgeland, MS
Margaret Collins served as leading expert witness for Baymeadows, LLC, an apartment complex owner in Ridgeland MS in the Jackson area, in successful federal court suit against Ridgeland, Mississippi.
She prepared detailed expert report and gave a deposition regarding the City’s discriminatory attempt to rezone and eliminate well-maintained apartment complexes occupied by racial minorities without paying the owners just compensation.
The report influenced the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to file suit against the City of Ridgeland for discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. As a result, the City revoked the offending zoning provisions and granted grandfather status to the BBC Baymeadows Complex for as long as it remains an apartment complex.
For more information, see:
- Wall Street Journal Article
- HUD’s settlement announcement
- Read the full expert report at: Scribd.com
Forman v. City of Mill Creek, WA
Margaret Collins served as an expert witness in support of the Appellant’s challenge of the City’s use of amortization, a zoning technique that seeks to eliminate non-conforming uses without compensating owners of the property.
The City was seeking to shut down a top soils mining operation in a residential neighborhood without compensating the owner for the value of the property.
After reviewing relevant documents, Ms. Collins prepared a Declaration stating that the three-year amortization period for such a use was not reasonable because:
- The City had not properly considered the owner’s investment in the property, replacement costs, and market value of the site.
- There were no structures on the property that could be amortized; amortization applies only to buildings and improvements, not to the land value. Based on this Declaration, the City dropped the case against Pacific Soils.
Sunchase, et al v. City of Ridgeland, MS
Margaret Collins served as an expert witness in support of plaintiff property owners of five apartment complexes in a suit filed in federal court against the City of Ridgeland.
The City had rezoned the well-maintained apartment complexes, where the majority of the City’s minority residents lived, for mixed-use development. Rather than grandfather the apartments, the City sought to terminate them and to eliminate the complexes by a zoning technique known as amortization.
Ms. Collins prepared an expert report and gave a deposition presenting evidence of that the rezoning was arbitrary, did not follow due process, and was a misuse of the amortization technique, which is intended to protect residential neighborhoods from commercial encroachment, not to eliminate them.
The evidence presented by Ms. Collins was instrumental in HUD’s decision to sue the City for discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. As a result, the City revoked the rezoning of the five apartment complexes and granted them grandfather status for as long as they continue to operate.
