Cities in California
In California, Cities have often gotten totally out of hand, so the Legislature had to start restricting them more.
In 1967, the ability of Municipal Corporations to issue Citations or Notice to Appear was repealed (former Penal Code 853.1 to 853.4). In 1970, the California Legislature repealed provisions for municipalities to enact ordinances or regulations imposing restrictions equal to or greater than those imposed by the state. California Health and Safety Code 17958.5, requires that the Building Code can only be amended for geographical, topographical, or climatic reasons, not by whim..(see Briseno v. City of Santa Ana 6 Cal.App.4th 1378, 8 Cal.Rptr.2d 486 (4th Dist 1992), Building Insustry Assn. V. City of Livermore, 45 Cal.App.4th 719, 52 Cal.Rptr.2d 902 (1st Dist 1996), Baum Electric Co. v. City of Huntington Beach 33 Cal.App.3d 572, 109 Cal.Rptr. 260 (4th Dist 1973), Gonzales v. Santa Ana 12 Cal.App.4th 1335, Cal. Apt. Assn v. City of Fremont 97 Cal.App.4th 693. California Health and Safety Code section 17958 now requires Cities and Counties to adopt and amend their codes with the latest Building Code within 6 months for uniformity or face loss of use of their existing Building Codes. As a further check, California Health and Safety Code 17958.7, which required that findings be made for the necessity of the Building Code amendments for geographical, topographical, or climatic reasons, and that those findings be filed with the State. Many Cities are using False Pretexts for Domination, usually labeled an unreasonable application of the Municipal Code or Building Code, because it is not for any needed purpose or exigent circumstance. “A legislative body may not, under the guise of the police power, impose restrictions that are unnecessary and unreasonable upon the use of private property or the pursuit of useful activities. (McKay Jewelers vs. Bowron).” In Chantiles vs. Lake Forest II Master Homeowner’s Assn, 37 Cal.App.4th 914,922, (1955), the Court terms the [government’s] actions as “a clear cut case of a ‘nanny state’ - nanny in almost a literal sense - going too far. These actions flew in the face of one of the most ancient precepts of American society and Anglo-American legal culture. “A man’s house is his castle” was not penned by anonymous, but by the famous jurist Sir Edward Coke in 1628.” “It is of far greater concern to effectuate an incremental whittling away of private property rights absent demonstrable public harm.” Hurwitz v. City of Orange, (September 24, 2004) (cite as: 2004 WL 2129731 (Cal. App. 4 Dist.) “the city now asserts that it should not be penalized…” “*12 There is a central flaw in this theory. It assumes that the local public entity determination of nuisance are absolutely immune from judicial scrutiny, such that even a transparently flimsy, transparently pretextual finding of nuisance would be enough to immunize the entity from any obligation to pay compensation.” “That is simply too broad a model of nuisance law. And, if there ever was a case where a city’s finding of “nuisance” could be found by a trial court to be pretextual (as a cover for the substantive taking of property, or as here, a property right), this is it. “in substance, the sequence shows that the city was not using its police power to abate a nuisance. Rather, it was trying to use its police power to abate nuisances as a fig leaf to hide the rather naked expropriation of an existing property right.” “We need only add that there is precedent for the point that a public entity cannot mask what is substantively a taking merely by invoking its nuisance power. We have already discussed the Leppo case, directly on point, where the court awarded damages after a city preemptively demolished a building as a nuisance.”
Most Cities have no charter granting them exclusive jurisdiction for “Municipal Affairs”, and thus, each as a Municipal Corporation with the limited powers of a General Law City, is subject to County and State Codes and Statutes, with which it is in conflict. (An ordinance which prohibits the same acts which are forbidden by state law is void to extent that it duplicates state law. People v. Commons (Super. 1944) 64 Cal.App.2d Supp. 925, 148 P.2d 724; see Municipal Corporations 592(2). The police powers of a city under Government Code 38660 include the power to regulate construction, but not maintenance and use, unless they are unsafe for renters and the public: it is not designed to protect the owner from himself.
Health and Safety Code section 17912. “Rules and regulations promulgated pursuant to the provisions of this part and building standards published in the State Building Standards Code, relating to the erection or construction of buildings or structures, shall not apply to existing buildings or structures or to buildings or structures as to which construction is commenced or approved prior to the effective date of the rules, regulations, or building standards, except by act of the Legislature, but rules, regulations, and building standards relating to use, maintenance, and change of occupancy shall apply to all hotels, motels, lodginghouses, apartment houses, and dwellings, or portions thereof, and buildings and structures accessory thereto, approved for construction or constructed before or after the effective date of such rules, regulations, or building standards.”Building Code 3401 essentially grandfathers in existing structures that are safe.
Many Cities still go beyond their authority in the application of Building Codes. The City's Building Official, Code Enforcement Dept., and Dept. of Community Development all work under the auspices of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, whose vesting authority is delimited in 2001 California Building Code section 101.17. I am researching this now. One interpretation is that they have no authority to act against existing single-family residences occupied by owners. This Housing Law was to protect Tenants from Slumlords, not to protect owners from themselves.The definitions of Residential applications, in 2001 California Building Code section 310 for Group R Occupancies and by Group Classifications delimited in 2001 CBC 301, may not apply to a single family residential home that is not rented out, and does not have common toilet or kitchen facilities.
Join us in returning Government to the People. Help us teach Renegade Bureaucrats their Constitutional Limits.
Contact Jim Krage at jimk@cyberdude.com if you want to help.
