Opinion ID: 181572
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Equal Protection and Due Process Claims

Text: The Guggenheims make two other arguments, that the ordinance denies them substantive due process because it does not assure them a fair return on their investment, and that it denies them equal protection of the law because it treats mobile home park owners differently from other landlords. Due process claims can succeed when a rent control ordinance fails to substantially further a legitimate government interest. [50] The dissent argues that this ordinance did not achieve its purpose because it fails to control the price of sublets. It is true that the rent control ordinance at issue here does not control the rental price of a mobile home for occupants such as subletters. It controls the rental price of the land on which the mobile home is situated. This is in keeping with the purpose of the ordinance, which is not just to lower rents, but to alleviate the hardship to mobile home owners caused by the high cost of moving mobilehomes, the potential for damage resulting therefrom, requirements relating to the installation of mobilehomes, including permits, landscaping and site preparation, the lack of alternative homesites for mobilehome residents and the substantial investment of mobilehome owners in such homes. [51] The ordinance protects mobile home owners, not all renters. Such a purpose does not protect mobile home renters from all market increases in the value of occupancy. It protects owners of mobile homes from the leverage owners of the pads have, to collect a premium reflecting the cost of moving the mobile home on top of the market value of use of the land. This is a legitimate government purpose, related to but distinct from lowering housing prices for all renters. Whether the City of Goleta's economic theory for rent control is sound or not, and whether rent control will serve the purposes stated in the ordinance of protecting tenants from housing shortages and abusively high rents or will undermine those purposes, is not for us to decide. We are a court, not a tenure committee, and are bound by precedent establishing that such laws do have a rational basis. [52] Students in Economics 101 have for many decades learned that rent control causes the higher rents and scarcity it is meant to alleviate, [53] but the Due Process Clause does not empower courts to impose sound economic principles on political bodies. [54] The Guggenheims' equal protection theory is also foreclosed by precedent, [55] and would have no force even if it were not, because only a rational basis is needed for this ordinance, and mobile parks differ from most other property in the separation of ownership of the land from the improvements affixed to the land. It is possible that application of the ordinance by the arbitrator will violate substantive or procedural due process requirements, but that remains to be seen, if at all, in an as applied challenge to its application. AFFIRMED.