IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO
You decide to invest your retirement savings and buy a home in Newport Beach, a couple of blocks from the beach. Your plan, someday, is to retire there. But for now, you can’t afford that, so you prepare your home to rent out for the upcoming summer. As a matter of fact, a heavy factor in deciding whether you could afford this home was the anticipated revenues from rental income in the lucrative summer rental market. You even timed the sale so that you’d own the property just in time. You go down to Newport Beach City Hall to file a permit to use the property as a rental and you told you are REJECTED.
Huh? Yes, rejected. You see, in their infinite wisdom, the Newport Beach City Council voted 6-0 to place a 45 day moratorium on the granting of any permits for short-term rental housing. That’s right, in the heart of America’s most Republican County, we have a City Council that is enacting policies that make the folks in Berkeley look conservative…
PROPERTY RIGHTS SUSPENDED IN NEWPORT BEACH
Why are the elected representatives of Newport Beach trampling on the property rights of their own constituents?
Welcome to the world of politics. There is a small but apparently influential group of Newportians who are concerned with the presence of Sober Living Homes in their city. I don’t know these people, so I will refrain from questioning their motives. But they seem to have an inordinate amount of influence on their City’s elected Councilmembers.
This extraordinary influence led to city officials convincing their local State Senator to sponsor legislation that would have made it much more difficult for new homes like these to operate, and give more control to the city, which presumably would be used to harass the operators and residents of these homes. This legislation, about which we have written, died in a policy committee earlier this week.
FLAUNTING THE CONSTITUTION
I don’t think that the City of Newport Beach has the right to prohibit a homeowner from using their property as a rental. That will get settled by a judge, if pressed. But of much greater concern is the apparent disregard that six elected Councilmembers have for the constitutional rights of some of their constituents.
Look, we all get it – that there are some noisy neighbors who don’t like Sober Living Homes (and probably equally dislike all of those weekly summer rentals). But the job of an elected official is to step back and take a balanced approach to governance and policy-setting.
Very disappointing, I’m afraid. I am friends or acquaintences with many of those that voted for this, and frankly was shocked at their action.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I live in San Francisco where owners of residential income property owners are considered the equivalent of slave owners. The sad fact is that municipalities can place all sorts of restrictions on private property through zoning or ordinance. The Communist Caucus of the Ca. Democrat Party is attempting to place statewide restrictions by modifying the Ellis Act, which allows property owner to go out of business.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am
IMAGINE ANOTHER SCENARIO
BY SCOTT PEOTTER
You have saved for several years in order to bring your family to a home on the peninsula because you love to surf and you used to live here when you were young. You and your wife have dreamed about what you would do with the place and how you would teach your kids to love surfing like you do.
Yea, you know that the peninsula has a “rowdy side”, but you were careful about where you bought and the bad part is really only during the summer.
So you come home from work one day to find 6 men ages varying from 25-40 standing and smoking in the doorway of your neighbor’s house (which is only 6’ away from yours). You ask what they are doing and you are told to F@#$ off. You retreat inside being outnumbered as you are.
You find out that it has been that way all day that there are 8 men living there starting that morning a residential treatment facility company that provides treatment facilities to the state for recovering drug addicts, alcoholics and other dependent behaviors just leased the house from its new owner, a company that provides group rehab houses.
As you sit there in your living room, you can hear your new neighbors talking and using perverse and vile language, loudly discussing their past exploits.
You find out that these are mostly convicted drug and alcohol abusers and this is their new halfway house or treatment facility. You complain to the city, but are told that the city cannot do anything, and since there are no CC&Rs, there is no alternative.
How do craft a city law that protects Fleischman’s example yet protects the homeowners in my example. That is what the city is trying to figure out. The Moratorium only buys the city some time to figure it out without letting it get any worse.
“Alcoholism or Drug Abuse Recovery or Treatment Service”, according to the state website, means a service which is designed to promote treatment and maintain recovery from alcohol or drug problems which includes one or more of the following: detoxification, group sessions, individual sessions, educational sessions, and/or alcoholism or drug abuse recovery or treatment planning.”