John Evans ~ Town Bans Homeowners From Renting Their Property

OffTheGrid  January 14 2014

winonamnProperty owners in Minnesota are challenging a first-of-its-kind ordinance restricting rental properties in the city of Winona.

The city, which is home to Winona State University, passed the ordinance in 2006 capping the number of rental properties on any block at 30 percent of the block’s total homes, according to Watchdog Minnesota. The law was meant to curb “excessive on-street parking, anti-social behavior and deteriorating housing conditions.”

But some believe it’s going too far.

“To me it’s getting beyond what elected officials are supposed to do — starting to dictate who can rent, who can’t rent, who can do this, who can do that,” Ted Dzierzbicki, one of the three plaintiffs in a legal challenge against the law, told Watchdog. ”They’re not the kind of laws that benefit and protect people. It’s more to do with somebody having a bug about something and trying to get a law towards it.”

Property owners with rental units were grandfathered in under the ordinance, which means the number of houses that can be rented varies per block. The Institute for Justice says it’s the first ordinance of its kind in the nation.

“Our argument is you cannot be denied your right to rent out your perfectly safe house to perfectly safe tenants just because a neighbor of yours has decided to do the same thing,” said Anthony Sanders, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who represented the homeowners.  “Otherwise the government is just picking and choosing who gets to exercise their property rights.”

They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor so that we could be free!

The city argues the case is about whether it can lay down licensing standards to better the community, and in April, a Winona district court upheld the ordinance.

“There is no indication that the 30% Rule was enacted or conceived as an insidious means of keeping certain constitutionally protected classes of people out of certain neighborhoods or any other improper purpose,” Winona County District Court Judge Jeffrey Thompson wrote in the ruling. “It is a good faith attempt to address real problems.”

The property owners have appealed, but it doesn’t help people like Ted and Lauren Dzierzbicki, who pay an $800 monthly mortgage on an empty house they can no longer legally rent.

“Everybody has to look at these types of laws and realize at some point in time it’s going to affect them,” Ted Dzierzbicki told Watchdog. “Some of these people that live close to the university that were behind this concept of trying to protect their neighborhood, when they pass on, what are their kids going to do with their house?  How are they going to get rid of their house?”

Ethan Dean, a former U.S. adviser in Iraq, had bought a house in Winona in 2007 to start a non-profit recovery home for returning soldiers, according to Watchdog. During his deployments, he would rent out the house to help his mortgage payments. That was until the city sent him a letter informing him he was running afoul of the ordinance.

“I am currently on my fourth mission in Iraq,” Dean wrote from his post in an email to a reporter, according to Watchdog. “It kills me to defend our freedoms, when my own home is subject to some 1944 Berlin Nazi BS…I don’t care what the city says, THEY do NOT own MY house…why the he** do I need THEIR permission?????”

According to Watchdog, the League of Minnesota Cities filed a brief supporting Winona, saying in its filing that the court’s decision will have a “significant” impact on cities that already have similar ordinances or are considering them. The filing also states that cities in Minnesota “have a public interest in ensuring the city councils’ legislative decisions receive the constitutionally required deference on appeal.”

Sanders said that hundreds of homeowners across the state are being faced with situations like the Dzierzbickis in cities with similar laws.

“They are unconstitutionally being denied the right to exercise their property rights,” he told Watchdog.

3 thoughts on “John Evans ~ Town Bans Homeowners From Renting Their Property

  1. Yet another example proving Amerika is NOT as free as most assume. If you don’t actually own (control) ‘your’ property and a commun(ity)e owns/controls it instead…(Jeff Foxworthy style) you might be living in a communist country. If your neighbors can collectively decide what you can/cannot do with ‘your’ property/money/body….you might be living in a communist country.

  2. What nobody is telling these people is that the municipality is corporate. Hence, it is secretly owned by a third party or other corporation and not the people of the town! No corporate ordinance can become a lawful contract until a certain amount of days has passed upon the advertising of that ordinance. The advertising of ordinances is an offer to CONTRACT with the public and if not objected to by the public, it passes as accepted, by tacit procuration!

    If a quorum of these people simply file objections to the ordinance, it cannot be enforced! Also, if the people confer a local Grand Jury, the Grand Jury can strike down the passage of this ordinance and recommend the prosecution of these Council members for overstepping their elected responsibilities.

  3. I support the rights of individual homeowners to do with their property as they see fit. But I think this law was intended to prevent the transition of owner-occupied neighborhoods into predominantly rental ghettos. How would you like to be a homeowner living next door to a rental unit with 10 obnoxious college kids who have loud parties, or a home full of 20 illegal immigrants, or a crack house, or just trashy no-good neighbors? Perhaps the law can be revised to protect homeowners from the scenario described above without limiting the ability of homeowners to rent their properties?

    Around the country, Wall Street investor groups are buying single family homes to turn into rental property, rather than these homes being bought by families, first-time buyers, etc that are actually owner-occupied. When you turn traditional single family home neighborhoods into rental neighborhoods, the quality of life goes down, WAY down. It’s not fair to those homeowners who actually live in their homes when these vulture capitalists turn owner-occupied neighborhoods into rental ghettos filled with people who don’t care about maintaining the property, respecting peace and quiet for others, and making a positive contribution to the neighborhood.

    We had been wanting to buy a larger home, but we can’t compete against the investors and their ‘cash only’ offers. They are driving up the costs of real estate for people like us who want a home to actually live in versus being being an investment for a long-distance slum lord. And we are seeing the negative impact on our neighborhood by the increasing number of homes for rent. Now we just want to buy a home in a safer neighborhood without so many rental units. Where is the balance and fairness?

    I support the rights of individual homeowners to do with their property as they see fit. But I think this law was intended to prevent the transition of owner-occupied neighborhoods into predominantly rental ghettos. How would you like to be a homeowner living next door to a rental unit with 10 obnoxious college kids who have loud parties, or a home full of 20 illegal immigrants, or a crack house, or just trashy no-good neighbors? Perhaps the law can be revised to protect homeowners from the scenario described above without limiting the ability of homeowners to rent their properties?

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