In Colony Cove Properties v. City of Carson, published March 28, 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court's dismissal of a mobilehome park's facial and as-applied challenges to the city's 1979 mobilehome park rent control ordinance, amended in 2006. The statute of limitations for a facial regulatory takings challenge to the ordinance (currently two years) began running when the ordinance was adopted in 1979. A 2006 amendment of the ordinance to add a methodology of calculating fair return (maintenance of net operating income) as a factor to consider in reviewing rent increase requests was not a sufficiently substantive change to the ordinance to revive the statute of limitations. Therefore, the 2008 facial challenge was time-barred.
The as-applied challenge to the ordinance, concerning the park's rejected petition for a rent increase, was barred because it was unripe. To challenge the ordinance as a regulatory taking, the park had to first petition for administrative mandamus in state court, seeking a Kavanau adjustment of future rents to obtain just compensation. The park had not done so. It failed to show such a petition would be futile on the ground that the park was going to be subdivided into tenant-owned parcels. The subdivision would only provide the ground for a state court inverse condemnation action, which the park would have to exhaust before bringing a federal challenge.
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