MHC Financing Ltd. Partnership v. City of San Rafael

As Yogi Berra observed, “it’s deja vu all over again” as we are being “called upon to consider, yet again, a takings challenge to mobile home rent control laws.” Le vald, Inc. v. City of Palm Desert, 998 F.2d 680, 683 (9th Cir.1993). In this appeal, we consider whether San Rafael’s mobilehome rent regulation violates the park owners’ substantive due process rights, constitutes a regulatory taking under Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 , 98 S.Ct. 2646 , 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978), or runs afoul of the ‘public use’ requirement of the Fifth Amendment under the standards articulated in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 , 125 S.Ct. 2655 , 162 L.Ed.2d 439 (2005). We conclude that the regulation passes muster against all of these challenges.

I.

Contempo Marin is one of two mobile-home parks in San Rafael, California and is owned by MHC Financing Limited Partnership (now Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.) and Grapeland Vistas, Inc. (collectively, “MHC”). MHC owns the pads upon which the mobilehomes sit and pad lessees pay monthly rent to MHC for use of their respective pads and the facilities and services that MHC provides. Despite their name,…