Huntington Beach Vows To Fight Against Property Rights

Huntington Beach Mayor Dave Sullivan is retiring from office this year -- and none too soon. In news  story posted this afternoon on the OC Register website, Sullivan vowed the city would defend in court a two-year old law that could, according to the article, "force mobile home park owners to pay residents millions of dollars if they shut down their parks.":

Owners of three area mobile home parks are among a group that sued the city in June -- less than two years after the law was adopted to protect the city's roughly 6,000 mobile home residents and to preserve the 17 mobile home parks as low-cost housing.

The law requires park owners who want to shut down to relocate residents to a comparable park within a 20-mile radius or purchase the mobile homes at their in-place market value.

Why do local government officials so often treat mobile home park owners as if they weren't really  property owners and lack  real property rights? I know why: because mobile home residents tend to be vocal and organized, and councilmembers are afraid of them (as are legislators whose districts contain lots of mobile home parks).

I understand being upset if the owner of the mobile home park in which you live decides he or she wants to sell the land or develop it for another use -- but that's the risk of choosing to buy a home that's on land you don't own. Elected officials can empathize with displaced mobile home park residents, but at the end of the day the property rights of the landowner ought to take precedence, and city councilmembers ought to have the nerve to say as much. When government starts traducing the property rights of one group of people -- even in the name of "compassion" -- it traduces the property rights of everyone.

Comments

[Chip Ahlswede]

In 2002 the city passed an initiative, measure EE, championed by a coalition of property rights organizations, stating that the city could not pass a law restricting the sale, lease, or transfer of property.

How could this law supercede the measure without having gone to a vote of the residents of HB?

[Mark Alpert]

As a resident of Huntington Beach, I am deeply heartened by the decision of the City Council to spend my money to defend the right of mobile home park residents to take the property of mobile home park owners. Next time I hear City Council members complain that they lack money for schools or to improve an aging infrastructure, I will recognize that money that could be used for such frivolous programs is much better spent protecting the right of mobile home residents to be paid two hundred thousand dollars for a 1962 single-wide worth $10,000. The City Council voted to defend a mobile home park closure ordinance that would require a park owner who decided he or she no longer wanted to to do business as a mobile home park, to pay all residents the "in place value," which translates to the value of the mobile home and the underlying land. Good job, City Council! In one crass political fell swoop, you managed to adopt a bad policy, that violates property rights and wastes valuable resources.

[Zak]

I just bought a mobile home
in Huntington Beach in a senior park.

Two attorneys with licenses live there.
The mobile park owners would be in
for the fight of their lives.

Huntington Beach City Council should fight
the park owners.