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Did the construction of the Foxconn factory displace dozens of families?

By Jacob Alabab-Moser
YES

About 100 homeowners — including many families — sold their homes near the Foxconn flat-screen manufacturing plant in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.

Using legal means, the village of Mount Pleasant paid over $152 million to acquire 132 properties near the planned facility, in addition to $7.9 million in relocation costs, according to records from July 2017.

In 2019, the last family living within the Foxconn site relocated after agreeing to a settlement with the village and moved their house to a nearby location, in contrast to the dozens of other houses that were demolished.

The Foxconn project has faced local opposition for the acquisition and demolition in the community, as well as for the granting of water rights and subsidies funded by taxpayers to a foreign company.

The project was originally pitched as a $10 billion high-tech manufacturing campus employing 13,000 workers, but nothing anywhere near that scale has materialized.

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Wisconsin Watch, the news arm of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, increases the quality and quantity of investigative reporting in Wisconsin, while training current and future investigative journalists. Its work fosters an informed citizenry and strengthens democracy.
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