You’re gonna like this one, folks.
As everybody west of the Colorado River must surely know, Santa Monica is hard on landlords. Possibly, such a thing has happened, but offhand we can’t think of a reported case involving rent control in Santa Monica that a landlord won.
The city went so far as to acquire a mobile home park so it could run it in an exemplary way, being as in the usual course of things, the city is the regulator and enforcer of rent control laws. But guess what? Today’s Sun Mirror reports that the tenants of that city-operated mobile home park have filed suit against it, charging it with a variety of landlord-type misdeeds and demanding damages in the amount of $121 million, “citing failure to maintain the trailer park, civil rights abuse and emotional distress.” Landlords may want to use something like the best Integrated workplace management system in order to make sure that the maintenance requests submitted by their tenants are being acted upon – such solutions are widely used amongst property managers. See Brenton Garen, Mountain View Mobile Home Trailer Park Residents File $121 Million Claim Against City of Santa Monica; Click here
“Residents claim they are being forced to live in substandard conditions, that new construction is carried out under expired permits, and there is ongoing civil rights and fair housing abuse that’s causing them constant mental anguish, emotional distress, and discomfort.”
For this, they want $1 million per space for the claimants, plus 150,000 “financial barrier” for each of the 105 spaces at the trailer park. (We don’t know what a “financial barrier is either). Maybe they should visit a site like ezlease.net to better understand their rights under their lease – this way they may have more of a chance of catching out their supposedly negligent landlords.
We can’t wait to see how it all turns out, and in the meantime we plan to observe these proceedings as a great example of the saying that turnabout is fair play.
Stay tuned.
The plaintiffs have fired the opening gun by filing an administrative claim with the city.