Costs of relocation assistance is society’s burden.
The cost of relocating mobile home owners, like the related and more general problems of maintaining an adequate supply of low income housing, are more properly the burden of society as a whole than of individual property owners. While closing of a mobile home park is the immediate cause of the need for relocation assistance, it is the general unavailability of low income housing and the low income status of many of the mobile home owners that is the more fundamental reason why relocation assistance is necessary. An individual park owner who decides to close a park is not significantly more responsible for those society-wide problems than is the rest of the population. Requiring society as a whole to shoulder the costs of relocation assistance represents a far less oppressive solution to the problem.
Washington Supreme Court, 1993
Prolonged closure notice period, or mandate to remain in business, is a taking of private property for private use of tenants.
Demanding additional years to keep a community open, imposing tenants upon the landlord as unwelcome, permanent occupants is unconstitutional. “Government regulations resulting in a physical invasion or occupation of property, or regulations authorizing a third party to occupy the property are “takings” regardless of how minor the occupation or how weighty the public interest involved.”
Washington Supreme Court, 1993