Opinion ID: 1763145
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Applicability to Mobile Home Parks

Text: Having determined that the grandfather clause applies to changes in county zoning regulations, we move to the question of whether a mobile home park is the kind of establishment amenable to grandfather clause protection. The Court of Appeals held that Hiwassee LLC was not subject to the grandfather clause because section 13-7-208(b)(1) applies only to any industrial, commercial or business establishment and does not protect residential establishments. The Court of Appeals classified the mobile home park as a residential establishment because the park was used for human habitation. On brief and at oral argument, the parties acknowledged they had agreed that Hiwassee LLC operated the mobile home park as a commercial establishment. Before this Court, both parties continue to argue that the Court of Appeals erred in classifying Hiwassee LLC's mobile home park as a residential use. On the facts of this case we agree. Trailers and mobile homes have undergone a great deal of change since they first appeared in our culture. Erwin S. Barbre, Annotation, Validity and Application of Zoning Regulations Relating to Mobile Home or Trailer Parks, 42 A.L.R.3d 598, 602 (1972) (hereinafter Barbre). In the 1920s, the original mobile home was often a small vehicle used by tourists or itinerant workers as a place of temporary residence. Id. ; 2 Kenneth H. Young, Anderson's American Law of Zoning § 14.01, at 703 (4th ed.1996) (hereinafter Young). The units were constructed to be placed on wheels and transported over roadways. Allan D. Wallis, Wheel Estate 31-39 (1991) (hereinafter Wallis); Barbre, 42 A.L.R.3d at 602. Early mobile home or trailer parks were intended to provide only temporary parking spaces for traveling persons. Wallis, at 39. The clearly transient nature of both the trailer and its occupants rendered both suspect in the communities through which they passed. Young, § 14.01, at 704; Barbre, 42 A.L.R.3d at 602. Thus, early zoning ordinances attempting to regulate these parks often prohibited them entirely from residential areas. See, e.g., Jensen's, Inc. v. Town of Plainville, 146 Conn. 311, 150 A.2d 297, 299 (1959); City of Raleigh v. Morand, 247 N.C. 363, 100 S.E.2d 870, 874 (1957). Park owners clearly operated commercial ventures, renting out spaces to park, perhaps electrical hookups, and communal restroom, bath, park, or other spaces for short stays. Wallis, at 40-43. Beginning in the 1950s, as society itself became more transient and the cost of conventional housing rose, mobile homes became a more popular housing alternative. Jay M. Zitter, Annotation, Validity of Zoning or Building Regulations Restricting Mobile Homes or Trailers to Established Mobile Home or Trailer Parks, 17 A.L.R.4th 106, 109 (1982). Towns and cities began to see requests to place individual trailers onto individual lots. See, e.g., Robinson Twp. v. Knoll, 410 Mich. 293, 302 N.W.2d 146, 154 (1981); Morin v. Zoning Bd. of Review, 102 R.I. 457, 232 A.2d 393, 395 (1967). They also began to see requests to operate more permanent mobile home parks, where either an individual would park his personally-owned vehicle permanently or where the owner of the park would provide permanent vehicles for long-term rental. See Wallis, at 192-95; James F. Vernon, Note, Mobilehomes: Present Regulations and Needed Reforms, 27 Stan. L.Rev. 159, 165-67 (1974). Often, in both those situations, wheels would be removed from the chassis of the vehicle and a more permanent platform, often including a porch or other amenities, would be constructed onto the vehicle. See James Milton Brown & Molly A. Sellman, Manufactured Housing: The Invalidity of the Mobility Standard, 19 Urb. Law. 367, 367-68 (1987) (hereinafter Brown & Sellman) (citing Arthur D. Bernhardt, Building Tomorrow: The Mobile/Manufactured Housing Industry 291-98 (1980)). Because mobile homes continued to engender suspicion and fear on the part of residents, cities and counties have struggled to determine their classification for zoning and taxation purposes. Young, § 14.01, at 705-07, § 14.03, at 714-20, & § 14.13, at 754-56. As governments became more urbanized and adopted more stringent zoning regulations, the applicability of nonconforming use provisions became more important to owners of trailer parks which often had been opened before the existence of zoning restrictions. See, e.g., Slaven v. City of Buford, 257 Ga. 100, 355 S.E.2d 663, 663-64 (1987); City of Crowley v. Prejean, 173 So.2d 832, 837 (La.Ct.App.1965). Commentators, and most courts until very recently, have agreed that [a] mobile home court is a commercial venture. Young, § 14.01, at 706; see Midgarden v. City of Grand Forks, 79 N.D. 18, 54 N.W.2d 659, 662 (1952) (describing health and safety concerns specifically associated with the congregation of trailers into trailer parks, such as undue concentration of population, lack of proper facilities for removal of rubbish, disposal of waste and sewage); 3 Patricia E. Salkin, American Law of Zoning § 20:5 (5th ed. Westlaw 2009 update) (discussing the exclusion of mobile home parks from residential districts because the parks limit the growth potential of the land, present public health hazards, and pose challenges in supplying municipal services). Focusing on the communal nature and continued assumption of itinerancy of mobile homes and their tenants, courts well into the 1980s and 1990s distinguished mobile home parks from more traditional types of housing and even from the placement of individual mobile homes on individual lots. For example, in Overstreet v. Zoning Hearing Board, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth court reasoned: we note that both as a legal and a practical matter, individual mobilehomes and mobilehome parks are two different types of legitimate housing uses. Thus, as in this case, the fact that an ordinance allows mobilehomes, like other detached, single-family dwellings, to be placed on individual lots in residential districts does not affect our analysis of the municipality's regulation of mobilehome parks.... [A] mobile home park is not simply a conglomeration of mobile homes, but rather a planned community involving social, recreational and commercial activities. Therefore, the device of permitting mobile homes on individual lots will not substitute for the responsibility of providing for mobile home parks. 152 Pa.Cmwlth. 90, 618 A.2d 1108, 1113 (1992) (internal quotations omitted). This Court's only consideration of the classification of mobile home parks as either residential or commercial arose in our decision more than twenty years ago in Clouse v. Cook, [15] No. 87-68-I, 1988 WL 34834 (Tenn. Apr.18, 1988). In that case, the Clouses owned and operated a ten-acre, seventy-unit trailer court inside the city limits of Franklin. When the city annexed the property in 1969, the city's zoning ordinances prohibited the operation of a trailer court but allowed an existing use to continue without expansion for twenty-five years after a zoning change rendered that use nonconforming. However, Tennessee Code Annotated section 13-7-208 permitted nonconforming commercial uses not only to continue in perpetuity, but also to expand on the property through the destruction and reconstruction of the facilities. In July 1985, the Clouses demolished two adjacent units, added to the foundation of one such unit, and constructed a new unit twice as large as one of the demolished units. On July 31, 1985, the city's building inspector issued a permit for a storage room which could not be used for a dwelling. The city's zoning board denied the Clouses a permit to rent the new unit, a decision which the chancery court and Court of Appeals affirmed. Although the Clouses claimed the protection of the grandfather clause, the city and its board members maintained that the clause did not apply because, while the plaintiffs [were] engaged in a business venture in renting the units in the trailer court, ... the renters use[d] the units as `residences' and ... such use negates an industrial, commercial or business classification. Id. at . We reversed the Court of Appeals, reasoning as follows: Plaintiffs rent 70 units on a weekly basis in an area designed and used as a trailer court or trailer park. No rational person would have referred to the units that plaintiffs demolished as single family residences, or residences of any character. This record is silent with respect to the number of units that are occupied by transients, or longer term tenants, but the units in the [Clouses' trailer court] were referred to by the building inspector, and others, as mobile homes.... The very nature of a trailer court or trailer park containing house trailers and mobile homes give[s] rise to the assumption of transient occupancy as distinguished from residential occupancy. The bottom line is that the occupants of the units are more realistically classified as customers of a trailer court operation than occupants of residences. Defendants admit, and it is beyond question, that plaintiffs are engaged in a business in the operation of the trailer park. In addition, plaintiffs have been permitted to operate the trailer court from the date of annexation to July 1985 as a nonconforming use, entitled to the benefit of [the city's zoning ordinance]. If the use was residential at the date of annexation, the City could have and should have, under its ordinances, terminated the operation immediately. Id. Because the demolition and new construction did not change the use classification of the land, we held that the Clouses were protected by the grandfather clause. More recent changes in the construction of mobile or modular homes [16] and in the permanency of subdivision-like developments that allow the placement of such homes have rendered some of the concerns articulated in these earlier cases obsolete as applied to newer developments. See Brown & Sellman, 19 Urb. Law. at 385. In the instant case, however, we believe that Hiwassee LLC's park, as originally contemplated, was similar in nature to the trailer park determined in Clouse to be commercial rather than residential in nature. The parcel in question in this case comprised 9.9 acres of property. At trial Hiwassee LLC introduced a drawing of the mobile home park as Ricky Sanders originally envisioned it. That drawing proposed a total of sixty-six spaces for trailers to be located. He himself purchased ten new trailers and four used trailers for use on certain of the lots. Ricky testified that, although he never completed the entire project, he operated the mobile home park as a business and that, when he sold the property to John Blackwell in 1999, he also sold the trailers. Ricky also rented six utility-equipped lots on which individuals presumably placed their own vehicles. Testimony from subsequent owners, and from city officials, confirms that residency in the mobile homes was transient and that, at times, no one lived in the trailers and they began to deteriorate. Additionally, the Planning Commission never contested that the park had been operated as a commercial establishment, thus entitling it to the application of the grandfather clause. In its brief to this Court, the Planning Commission concedes it has waived the right to argue otherwise. Based on Ricky Sanders's stated intention to create a trailer park with sixty-six lots available for rent, his statement that he intended to operate the park as a business, and the parties' concession that the operation on this particular parcel of property was commercial in nature, we conclude that this park was protected by the grandfather clause in this case. [17]