Homeowners Face Eminent Domain Bulldozers As Data Centers Demand Ever More Power

 Georgia Power isn’t negotiating anymore. The Southern Company subsidiary is seizing dozens of homes and hundreds of easements across Coweta and Fayette counties to ram through a 35-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line that will feed at least four massive AI data centers. Project Wansley is just the latest flashpoint in a backlash that has been building for months.

QTS Data Center in Fayetteville, Georgia

At least 20 to 30 homes face outright demolition. Another 300-plus properties will get permanent easements for towers planted in backyards and next to pools.

But residents like Ansley Brown are fighting back. Her mother bought their family home in 2003 through a USDA rural development loan for single mothers. Now the utility wants the property for the corridor. Brown’s viral TikTok exposing the lowball offers (she says $70,000 to $100,000 below market) has racked up millions of views and drawn state lawmakers into the fight. 

Ansley Brown, 27, whose mother purchased the family's childhood home in 2003 through a federal USDA loan for single mothers, became the face of the resistance after a TikTok video she posted drew more than 6 million views and caught the attention of state legislators.

Georgia Power says the line is essential.

The company is racing to add roughly 10 gigawatts of new generating capacity over the next five years, with executives openly stating that  about 80% of that power will go to data centers. Meanwhile, transmission has become the bottleneck, and utilities are turning to eminent domain to clear the path.

This isn’t happening in isolation. We’ve been pounding the table on data center resistance, from Northern Virginia counties rejecting new substations to Texas communities suing over water drawdowns and power rate spikes. The pattern is the same: hyperscale demand collides with local infrastructure limits, and the costs get socialized while the profits stay private.

Electricity prices are already feeling the pressure. Utilities across the Southeast and Midwest have warned of double-digit residential rate hikes tied directly to data center load growth. Georgia Power’s own filings show residential customers absorbing a growing share of the bill for transmission and generation built primarily for big tech. 

The same dynamic is playing out with Meta’s Georgia facilities, where local reporting has highlighted water quality complaints, including muddy runoff affecting nearby residents, alongside the power demands.

We’ve seen this movie before with pipelines and wind farms. The difference now is the sheer scale of the load and the speed at which it’s arriving. Data centers don’t just want power; they want it yesterday, and they’re willing to let utilities use the state’s hammer to get it. The pushback in Georgia is a warning shot as more communities draw the same line.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/homeowners-face-eminent-domain-bulldozers-ai-data-centers-demand-new-power

https://nypost.com/2026/05/24/us-news/hochuls-pied-a-terre-tax-will-hurt-regular-folks-retirees-because-of-property-value-fallout-critics/

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politics-policy/cny-copa-sandy-nurse-mamdani-20260519/

https://gothamist.com/news/mamdani-eyes-sweeping-housing-plan-for-blocks-south-of-brooklyns-prospect-park

https://commercialobserver.com/2026/05/world-cup-new-york-hotels/

TD Bank Launches Agentic AI to Streamline Real Estate Secured Lending

 Toronto-Dominion Bank is launching its first agentic artificial intelligence model to automate and streamline the application process for mortgages and home equity lines of credit.

The use of the autonomous AI model is a first step by the Canadian bank to leverage agentic AI to begin what it describes as an end-to-end transformation of its real estate secured lending operations.

Canada's biggest lenders are adopting AI in an effort to accelerate growth. TD, Canada's second largest bank by market value, has been working to cut costs from its operations and automate processes, and has embarked on efforts to deploy technology such as AI at scale.

TD said the agentic AI model it developed uses autonomous agents to create application summary memos by classifying client documents, extracting key information, calculating client income and validating figures against select policy requirements. It can perform consent checks and search for any discrepancies before generating a summary for underwriters.

Early results indicate that agentic AI is reducing the process from an average of 15 hours to an average of less than three minutes, while also providing more accurate results, it said. It is part of a push by the bank that aims to combine advanced machine intelligence with human expertise to deliver faster, simpler and more personalized services and a goal of generating 1 billion Canadian dollars (US$728 million) in annual value from AI in the coming years.

TD said the integration of agentic AI will be overseen by its Trustworthy AI team, which evaluates AI models on markers including privacy, security, fairness and accountability before they come into contact with humans. The team will continue to monitor models after they are deployed, it said.

https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202605215498/td-bank-launches-agentic-ai-to-streamline-real-estate-secured-lending

NYC tenant from hell sued for torturing neighbors in ritzy enclave, spewing vile abuse

 So much for the sanctity of home.

The owners of an Upper East Side rental are suing a resident for upwards of $1.5 million in damages as they look to oust her for continued harassment and abuse of neighbors, passersby and staff. 

East 77 Owners filed a complaint against tenant Layla Al-Marzooqi, an artist who lives in Apartment 1B at the five-story, 10-unit 436 E. 77th St. after she verbally accosted neighboring tenants in the hallways and on the sidewalk, screamed inside her apartment for consecutive hours, harassed the superintendent, and posted a threatening sign on her front door, according to court documents recently filed in New York State Supreme Court. 

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Layla Al-Marzooqi has been agitating her neighbors, a lawsuit claims.@VonNachtblau/Faceboook

“She wasn’t always the nicest person to deal with but I could deal with her. It was fine,” building managing agent Matthew Goodman with Eric Goodman Realty told The Post.

But in April, “something flipped,” he said.

“It just kept escalating. We were hoping it was a random incident and it would stop. It has been absolute chaos,” he said.

Goodman said the property’s owners — a family — speak through him.

When Eric Goodman Realty began managing No. 436 and the two adjoining buildings, which have separate entrances but all share a laundry room, in 2022, Al-Marzooqi was already living in a studio apartment in one of them, No. 440, Goodman said.

He said he had no problem upgrading Al-Marzooqi — who didn’t respond to requests for comment — to a one-bedroom dwelling in November 2024 in No. 436, because while she was “a little difficult,” she was “never rude or threatening.” Her rent started at $3,000 per month.

But then on April 12, Al-Marzooqi, “directed a stream of obscenities at a neighboring tenant in the hallway,” the suit claims.

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The exterior of 436 E. 77th St., where the allegedly problematic tenant has lived for several years.Tamara Beckwith/NY Post

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Neighbors say that Al-Marzooqi has been hurling slurs inside and in front of the building.Tamara Beckwith/NY Post

“She cursed me out in the hallway for no apparent reason other than my girlfriend’s dog was over and she hates dogs,” the neighbor told The Post.

“A few days later, she was screaming all day so [Goodman] said a checkup was warranted by the police. I called, and then after the police left, she posted on her Facebook and called out my apartment number and basically told me to die.

“From then on, I started noticing her all day screaming. And she had been screaming at people walking their dogs down the street, and just in general.”

The same month, a tenant reported to management that Al-Marzooqi’s four hours of screaming without pause made it so she was “unable to hear her own television, that she was unable to think and that she had become frightened,” court documents say.

And this was not an isolated incident.

In addition, in April, Al-Marzooqi allegedly affixed a placard to her door that reads, “DEATH To you beyond below around above this Apartment Space,” visible to everyone passing through the common hallway. 

Also, as seen in the court documents, Al-Marzooqi has posted racist and homophobic comments which identify and tag the plaintiffs “by name and association” and accuse them of criminality on a public Facebook page.

She posted on Facebook art depicting a swastika with the Star of David, set against an American flag. Finally, Al-Marzooqi has scared off prospective tenants and existing tenants have asked to break their leases as a result of her conduct, the suit claims.

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Al-Marzooqi allegedly posted a threatening placard on her front door.

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According to court documents, she posted art and verbiage that upset her neighbors.

Tenants have reported fearing for their safety and have made many written complaints to management.

One tenant wrote, “As I was trying to leave the building the tenant was screaming at me, construction workers across the street, basically anyone that crossed her path,” per an email submitted in court documents.

The building terminated Al-Marzooqi’s lease, effective May 14 on the grounds that her “conduct constitutes a nuisance.”

Al-Marzooqi has not moved out, per Goodman.

The owners’ attorney said she intends to start a housing court proceeding on Thursday to get Al-Marzooqi out.

https://nypost.com/2026/05/21/real-estate/nyc-building-sues-tenant-allegedly-harassing-neighbors/