58. Regulating Rental Properties - Legal Principles

As a an owner of a large number of properties in Sharon, PA  has asserted his belief that increasing the renal inspection fee and requiring that rental properties have comprehensive insurance policies in force as being burdensome and subject to challenge in court, I did a little research. Here are some points from an informative law journal article.

The Supreme Court in applying the takings clause of the fifth amendment and the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment when looking at government regulations makes a number of considerations.
    1., Does the regulation amount to a physical confiscation?
    2., Does the regulation leave the property owner with economically viable use of the            property?
    3., Was the regulation enacted to prevent  a noxious use of a property?
    4., Does the regulation unfairly single out some people and force them to bear a burden that should be borne by the public as a whole?
    5., Do the benefits of the regulation outweigh the detriment to the property owner?
    6., Is the regulation necessary to effect a substantial public purpose?

When the Court  has interpreted a state regulation of private property as essentially economic legislation, it will uphold the regulation as log as it is not wholly arbitrary.

Many regulations affecting property constrain an owner’s use of a property. Examples are zoning ordinances and rent control laws. The state can require owners to maintain their property in certain ways. Property owners are required by law to expend resources to purchase smoke detectors and to place them on ceilings. In these examples the government has regulated property by virtue of its police powers.

The due process provisions of the 14th amendment addresses bad law. Is the law overboard, arbitrary, insufficiently justified, economically inefficient or unfair?

Generally, for a government regulation not to exceed permissible bounds and become impermissible, it must promote a legitimate or substantial public purpose through means that are reasonably or closely related to achieving that purpose.

These thoughts are from “Constitutional Protections of Private Property: Decoupling the Takings and the Due Process Clause” by Mark Tunick in Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 3:3, May, 2001.