Court Upholds Barring of Condo Conversions : Ruling in Oxnard Case Strengthens Regulation of Housing by Cities
Cities have broad authority to bar developers from converting apartments into condominiums, even if the restrictions amount to a virtual ban on conversions, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In an Oxnard case, the court by a 5-2 vote said restrictions against condominium conversions are legal, as long as city officials have a rational basis for imposing them.
The ruling is related to several recent opinions in which the court said cities can regulate housing by showing a need for the controls. The court, for example, upheld sections of Santa Monica’s rent control ordinance that bars demolition of rental housing because of a rental shortage in that city.
However, in Thursday’s case, the court for the first time rejected a constitutional attack on such controls, saying they do not violate equal protection guarantees or constitutional property rights of apartment owners who seek to convert their buildings.
Reversing a Court of Appeal ruling, the court, in an opinion by Justice Otto Kaus, said Oxnard’s ordinance amounts to a “legitimate exercise of the city’s police power,” because the city is trying to preserve rental housing for lower-income families.
Property Rights
The case stemmed from a challenge to a 1980 Oxnard ordinance by the owner of a 72-unit apartment. The then-owner, Griffin Development Co., maintained that the ordinance violated its property rights, because it precluded conversion.
Dissenting Justice Stanley Mosk said Oxnard made it impossible to convert apartments into condominiums, adding that the law “placed unreasonable barriers in the way of those frugal families who prefer at the end of the year to have an enhanced equity in a piece of real property, instead of 12 rent receipts.”
The ordinance requires condominiums to be 1,000-square feet and have two bedrooms, room for washers and dryers and three parking spaces. There are no such requirements for rental apartments, prompting Griffin Development to argue that the ordinance violated constitutional guarantees that laws be applied equally.
“In short, the provisions of the ordinance border on the ludicrous,” Mosk said in a dissent joined by Justice Malcolm Lucas. “They can be explained only by the candid concession of the (Oxnard) city attorney: The city deliberately sought to make condominium conversions a practical impossibility.”
Oxnard city officials said no apartments have been converted into condominiums since the ordinance passed five years ago.
Stanley E. Cohen, who represented the Oxnard property owner, said the ruling indicates that the majority, led by Kaus, is “very reluctant to interfere with the authority and power of the city.” (Griffin Development vs. City of Oxnard L.A. 31930.)
In another ruling, the court said the Agricultural Labor Relations Board was within its authority to order Harry Carian, a Coachella Valley table grape grower, to bargain with the United Farm Workers union, even though the UFW did not win an election authorizing it to represent the workers.
Labor Practices
In an opinion by Justice Joseph Grodin, the court upheld the board’s contention that it could issue such orders if it finds that a grower committed “egregious unfair labor practices.” In Thursday’s case, the farm labor board found that Carian made it impossible to hold a fair election in 1977.
The board concluded that among the unfair practices, the management of Carian’s farm fired workers who appeared to be pro-union, raised hourly wages 45 cents to $3.15 to undermine the appeal of the union, spied on union organizers meeting with workers and threatened to have workers deported.
In dissent, Mosk, again joined by Lucas, pointed out that the law did not state that the board could issue an order requiring the grower to bargain with the union.
Mosk charged the justices in the majority “succumbed to the temptation to rewrite the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in order to take what they consider appropriate punitive action against this one farm employer.” (Harry Carian Sales vs. ALRB L.A. 31890.)
Poker Club
In a third decision, the court upheld a trial court order barring Warren Blank, a Bell businessman, from suing that city and several of its former officials after he lost a bid to win the license to run Bell’s poker club.
Among the targets of the suit were Peter Werrlein, a former mayor of Bell, who was sentenced to three years in prison on federal charges that he accepted a hidden interest in the poker club in exchange for ensuring that a group of his friends won the license. The court said Blank’s antitrust suit was barred because the state antitrust law does not cover such circumstances. (Blank vs. Kirwan et al. L.A. 32012.)
