Attorneys for Golden State Manufactured-home Owners League (GSMOL), and the City of Goleta, are now preparing to appeal the September 28th Court of Appeals 9th Circuit’s “rent control” decision in favor of Goleta property owners. That according to Ron Faas, GSMOL Legislative Action Team Coordinator, who finds the decision “horrendous.”
Ranch
Mobile Estates, owned by Maureen Pierce, with Daniel and Susan
Guggenheim since 1997, is the center of the decision. Upon
incorporation in 2002 the City of Goleta adopted the Santa Barbara County Rent Control Ordinance (RCO) first enacted in 1979 (amended 1987).
The
Court found, agreeing with the park owners in part, that the ordinance
constitutes a “taking” under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. The Bill of Rights amendment prohibits private property being “…taken for public use, without just compensation.”
The
Mobile Estates Owners took the City to court and at first prevailed.
The US District Court Central District of California (Florence Marie
Cooper, District Judge) found in their favor. That court’s decision was
“unraveled” by the Supreme Court thereafter (Courthouse News Service)
The
County’s intent was to address the growing lack of affordable housing.
If the courts finally sustain that a taking occurred the City of Goleta must compensate for the losses.
While mobile homeowners will lose affordable housing,
the ordinance would also mean the homes would lose significant value.
Rent controlled homes are attractive to buyers for their lower space
rental costs.
Although the park owners bought the property after
the original ordinance was in place, they argued they retained the
rights of the original developers.
Writing for the Court’s majority Judge Jay Scott Bybee
opined, “When the Park Owners acquired the property, they also arguably
acquired the prior owner’s interest in the property, including the
right to bring a takings action.” “Singling out mobile home park
owners, however, and forcing them to rent their property at a discount
of 80 percent below its market value, “is the kind of expense-shifting
to a few persons that amounts to a taking,” wrote Bybee.
In his dissent Judge Andrew Jay Kleinfeld
countered, “The present tenants [homeowners] lost nothing on account of
the City’s reinstitution of the County ordinance. But they would lose,
on average, over $100,000 each, if the rent control ordinance were
repealed.” Kleinfeld also wrote, “Continuation of the ordinance
deprives no one, not the plaintiffs and not the tenants, of any
compensable value.”
Read The Decision
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