Vera Coking vs Donald Trump: The Widow Who Wouldn’t Sell Her Home
- Daniel Holland
- 5 minutes ago
- 6 min read
For more than thirty years, Vera Coking lived quietly in a three-storey clapboard house just off the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Her home, at 127 South Columbia Place, wasn’t much to look at: white paint peeling, lace curtains faded by sea air, but it was hers. She and her husband had bought it back in 1961 for $20,000 as a seaside retreat. To Vera, it was more than property; it was memory, family, and the simple satisfaction of owning something she loved.
That feeling would one day put her squarely against one of the most ruthless businessmen in America: Donald J. Trump.
The House That Refused to Budge
In the late 1970s, Atlantic City was booming. Casinos were rising like glittering towers, promising fortune and spectacle. Vera’s modest house happened to sit in a prime location, just a short walk from the Boardwalk. Developers came knocking, but Vera wasn’t interested.
Her first test came from Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, who was building the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. He offered Vera $1 million for her house, about $5 million in today’s money. She turned him down flat.
When she refused, Guccione didn’t back down. Instead, he literally built around her house, erecting steel framework that loomed over Vera’s roof like a giant cage. The sight of her small home surrounded by beams and girders became a local curiosity, an early “holdout house” story long before that phrase became internet-famous. But Guccione’s empire ran out of money in 1980, and the half-finished casino was left to rust. The skeleton stayed for over a decade until it was finally torn down in 1993. Through it all, Vera remained.
“I loved my home,” she would later say. And she meant it.
Enter Donald Trump
By the early 1990s, Donald Trump had become Atlantic City’s golden boy, or at least, he liked to think so. His name was plastered on hotels and casinos, and his Trump Plaza towered just next door to Vera’s little house.
Trump wanted to build a parking lot for limousines next to his casino to serve his high-rolling guests. Several property owners nearby agreed to sell. But Vera, along with a couple of other holdouts, refused. She had lived there for over three decades by then. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Trump, of course, wasn’t used to hearing the word no.
As Ivanka Trump once put it, introducing her father at a campaign rally years later: “Donald Trump doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Trump personally visited Vera’s home to persuade her to sell. He tried charm, small talk, even gifts, once offering her tickets to a Neil Diamond concert. Vera famously told reporters later, “I didn’t even know who Neil Diamond was.”
When the soft approach failed, Trump took another route: legal pressure.
Eminent Domain and the CRDA
Trump turned to a powerful ally, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA), a state agency created to channel casino profits into public and private projects that supposedly benefited New Jersey. By law, 1.25% of all casino gross revenue went to the CRDA, funding everything from housing to road projects. But the agency also wielded a controversial tool: eminent domain.
Eminent domain, rooted in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allows the government to take private property for public use, provided the owner is given “just compensation.” Over time, the definition of “public use” had broadened, sometimes including private developments deemed to serve the public good.
In Trump’s case, the CRDA offered Vera $250,000 for her home, just a quarter of what Guccione had offered her ten years earlier. When she refused, the CRDA filed to seize her property in court. The plan was simple: bulldoze Vera’s house and turn it into a parking lot for Trump Plaza limos.
Trump defended his actions by painting Vera as a greedy obstacle. “This is a tough, cunning, crafty person who has purposely allowed this property to go to hell, right at the foot of the entrance to Atlantic City so that she can get a higher price,” he said at the time.
Vera’s response was sharper. She called Trump “a maggot, cockroach, and crumb.”
“They Could Do This in Russia, But Not Here”
Vera wasn’t alone in her fight. Nearby, Peter Banin and his brother had bought a building for a pawn shop for $500,000. The CRDA soon offered them $174,000 and told them to clear out. Banin, a Russian immigrant, was stunned. “I knew they could do this in Russia, but not here,” he said. “I would understand if they needed it for an airport runway, but for a casino?”
The homeowners banded together, determined to fight the seizure. With the help of attorney Glenn Zeitz and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, they launched a court battle that dragged on for years.
“TRUMPED!”
On July 20, 1998, Vera Coking and her neighbours finally won. Superior Court Judge Richard Williams ruled against the CRDA, saying that because there were “no limits” on what Trump could do with the property, the plan didn’t meet the legal test for eminent domain.
There was no guarantee that Trump would actually use the land for the stated public purpose. Essentially, the court said the CRDA couldn’t just hand private land to a private developer for a parking lot.
The New York Post celebrated the decision with the headline: “TRUMPED!”
Attorney Glenn Zeitz quipped to Trump afterward that there would be three women he’d never forget: “Ivana, Marla, and Vera.”
Fighting Fire (Literally)
Vera’s battle wasn’t just in the courts. During the construction and demolition around her property, workers allegedly damaged her home. At one point, they even started a fire in her attic. Vera sued Trump and the demolition company for the damage and settled for $90,000.
Trump, characteristically, didn’t back down in the press. “She wasn’t an innocent little darling I was dealing with,” he sneered, later calling her “a very litigious person.”
After the Victory
Despite her victory, life in Atlantic City grew tougher for Vera. The casino boom began to fade, and Trump’s empire wasn’t immune. His properties went bankrupt multiple times, and by the late 1990s, his flashy reputation had dimmed in the city that once embraced him.
Meanwhile, Vera simply stayed put. Her house became something of a local landmark, a stubborn reminder of resistance amid the city’s garish sprawl. Tourists would stop and point, marvelling at the tiny home that defied the billionaire next door.
But time eventually caught up with her. In 2010, Vera moved to California to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren as her health declined. She transferred ownership of the house to her daughter, who listed it for sale in 2011. The asking price was an optimistic $5 million. By 2013, it had dropped to $1 million.
Finally, in 2014, after more than fifty years of ownership, the property sold at auction for $583,000 to billionaire Carl Icahn, the man who, ironically, held the debt on Trump Entertainment, which owned Trump Plaza.
Icahn had the house demolished that November.
The End of Trump’s Atlantic City Era
The story came full circle seven years later. Trump Plaza, the casino that started it all, closed in September 2014 and sat vacant for years. In February 2021, it was finally demolished. Crowds gathered to watch the implosion, many cheering as the structure crumbled to dust, a symbol of Trump’s long and troubled relationship with Atlantic City.
For the city, his four-decade legacy had ended in rubble.
“It Was Never About the Money”
In the end, Vera Coking didn’t make a fortune from her defiance. She never wanted to. “It was never about the money,” she said. “I loved my home.”
Her fight became a symbol of ordinary people standing up against the misuse of power, especially the kind that disguises private gain as public good.
Eminent domain battles have continued across the United States, and the law remains controversial. In 2005, the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London upheld the government’s right to seize private property for private development, provided it served a broader “public purpose.” The backlash to Kelo led many states to pass tighter restrictions.
But Vera Coking’s story, decades earlier, had already shown what one person could do with courage, persistence, and a deep attachment to home.
She passed away quietly in California a few years later, far from the Boardwalk she once fought to protect.
A Legacy of Defiance
Looking back, it’s easy to see why Vera’s story still resonates. Against powerful forces, developers, government agencies, and a future president, she stood her ground. She wasn’t a lawyer, a politician, or a celebrity. She was a widow in a modest wooden house who simply refused to be bullied.
And in the process, she became a folk hero for property rights, a thorn in Trump’s side, and a reminder that sometimes the smallest house can cast the longest shadow.
Sources
Cato Institute / David Boaz, “Donald Trump and Eminent Domain Abuse.”
Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Widow Who Beat Trump.”
Wikipedia, “Vera Coking.”
Institute for Justice, Case Files: Coking v. Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
New York Post Archives, July 1998 headline: “TRUMPED!”
