Mobile Home Rent Control Upheld
The firm obtains a ruling by the Ninth Circuit overturning a multi-million dollar jury verdict against the City of Carson in a regulatory takings challenge to a mobile home rent control ordinance, preserving affordable homes. (Colony Cove Properties, LLC v. City of Carson, 888 F.3d 445 (9th Cir. 2018).)
SMW Advises Orinda Throughout Wilder Development Process
The Art & Garden Center opens at the Wilder playfields in Orinda in 2016 — a substantial community amenity resulting from a Development Agreement negotiated by the firm following its successful defense of a takings case brought by the developer against the City.
Challenge to Mobile Home Rent Control Defeated
The firm obtains a landmark ruling from the Ninth Circuit, en banc, rejecting constitutional challenges to Goleta’s mobile home rent control ordinance, protecting an important source of affordable housing and preventing displacement. (Guggenheim v. City of Goleta, 638 F.3d 1111 (2010).)
Protection of Affordable Housing in San Francisco
The firm successfully defends San Francisco’s Residential Hotel Ordinance before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court’s decision preserves single-room occupancy hotel rooms, a crucial source of affordable housing. The decision also prevents takings claimants from renewing their claims in federal court after suing unsuccessfully in state court. Andrew Schwartz receives the California Lawyer’s Attorney of […]
Court Upholds Lake Tahoe Scenic Regulations
Representing the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the firm secures a federal court victory in a regulatory takings challenge to TRPA’s scenic regulations that apply to development on Lake Tahoe. (Committee for Reasonable Regulation of Lake Tahoe v. TRPA, 311 F.Supp.2d 972 (2004).)
Lake Tahoe Development Moratorium Upheld
The firm successfully defends the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency against takings claims brought by over 400 property owners in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case upholding TRPA’s development moratorium to protect Lake Tahoe. (Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. TRPA, 535 U.S. 302 (2002).)
SMW Defends the City of Lafayette in Complex Land Use Litigation
The firm prevails in the court of appeal in a takings case, affirming the City of Lafayette’s denial of a landowner’s application for a lot line adjustment on its hillside property. (Loewenstein v. City of Lafayette. 103 Cal.App.4th 718 (2002).)
Appellate Court Rejects Takings Challenge to Denial of Hillside Subdivision
Representing the Town of Ross, the firm argues, successfully, that the developer’s takings claim is not ripe as the Town had not reached a final decision and that the developer’s equitable estoppel claim is also meritless. (Toigo v. Town of Ross, 70 Cal.App.4th 309 (1998).)
Challenge to Santa Cruz County’s Mobile Home Rent Control Ordinance Is Time Barred
The firm prevails in arguing that the mobile home park owner’s cause of action accrued when the County enacted the mobile home rent control ordinance, not when the ordinance was later amended or each time that a mobile home is sold to a new tenant. (De Anza Properties X v. County of Santa Cruz, 936 […]
Groundbreaking Commercial Housing Fee Upheld
The firm helps to draft the City of Sacramento’s inclusionary housing ordinance and a groundbreaking ordinance establishing a Housing Trust Fund, advises the City’s Housing & Redevelopment Agency in the preparation of a nexus study to support the ordinance, and defends the ordinance in federal court. (Commercial Builders v. City of Sacramento, 941 F.2d 872 […]