Ballinger v. City of Oakland: Pacific Legal Foundation Sues City of “Relocation Assistance Payments”

The Ballingers, a military couple, leased their single family home in Oakland when they were reassigned to Washington D.C. for service. Anticipating they would return to the Bay Area within a few years, they negotiated a term lease that would become a month-to-month tenancy around that time. However, after they leased their home (but before they had planned to move back in), the City of Oakland instituted a “relocation assistance payment” regulation, requiring them to pay their tenants in order to terminate the tenancy and move back in.

The Pacific Legal Foundation represents the Ballingers in their lawsuit against Oakland, alleging that the ordinance constitutes a taking/exaction of private property and that it violates their rights under the Ellis Act.

However, relocation assistance payments that are reasonable have been upheld as consistent with the Ellis Act (cities are actually allowed to mitigate the adverse impacts of Ellis Act displacement, provided the payments do not impose a “prohibitive price“).

That said, the case law interpreting the mitigation payments addresses the Ellis Act only, not the 5th Amendment, so there may be something to the claim that taking money from a landlord to give to a tenant in exchange for allowing the landlord to retake possession of her property is an unconstitutional “taking”. And PLF may have to focus on the constitutional claims, rather than violations of state law, as their clients actually performed an “owner move-in” eviction rather than an Ellis Act eviction.

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