A Miami homeowner is accusing the city of attempting to take private property via an allegedly abusive permitting process, a scheme that may affect more than 1,000 homes in Miami, a lawsuit claims.
Charles “Chad” Trausch filed an amended complaint against the city on Wednesday. He first sued the city eight months ago over the city’s demands that he transfer a portion of his front yard to the city for the public right-of-way. He filed the lawsuit pro se, which means he was representing himself, in April.
Trausch and his wife Stephanie paid $710,000 for their house in the Buena Vista neighborhood, just north of the Design District, in 2021.
When his wife was expecting their baby, they sought a permit for an addition so they could accommodate more family. Trausch submitted an application to the city’s zoning department for the two-bedroom, two-bathroom addition to his Miami home last year, but the city notified him that it would not issue a permit for the project until Trausch conveyed a permanent deed for a portion of his front yard, according to the complaint.
“For twenty months, the city withheld [Trausch’s] permit because he refused to give up half his front yard,” the lawsuit states. Once Trausch hired attorneys, “the city suddenly decided to ‘approve’ [Trausch’s] waiver request” without explanation.
Since Trausch submitted his permit application in the spring of 2024, “the cost of construction materials and labor exploded,” and his lawyers estimate it will cost him more than $200,000 to complete the addition.
Trausch’s attorneys, who include Ari Bargil and Suranjan Sen of the Institute for Justice, wrote in the amended complaint that the city of Miami has been taking property by “systematically extorting hundreds of Miami residents.” The Institute for Justice said it has identified 66 streets with more than 1,000 homes “at threat to this scheme.”
A city spokesperson said they would respond to The Real Deal’s request for comment but has not yet provided a comment.
Trausch’s attorneys argued that the city can’t expand any right-of-way without paying the property owner for the land. Miami’s procedures “subject people to a shakedown,” the complaint alleges. The lawsuit accuses the city of violating the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution regarding the uncompensated taking of private property and due process.
When a homeowner seeks a land-use permit, for example to build an addition, the city demands an expanded right-of-way to match the parcel’s base building line. Base building lines are setbacks where owners can’t build, but where they still own the land. But the city has been seeking the land via deeds instead, Trausch and his attorneys allege.
The Institute for Justice said that Miami has been getting homeowners to deed land over for right-of-ways for years, citing a city employee’s testimony in a federal case with Trausch’s neighbor that there have been “hundreds” of these demands. The city is landbanking so that it can eventually widen roads on the affected streets.
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