The Ohio Supreme Court held that a Lodi zoning ordinance deprives mobile-home park owners of their due process rights under the Ohio and U.S. Constitutions. The ordinance involved mobile parks in areas where current zoning prohibits mobile homes, but the mobile parks existed before the zoning prohibiting them, so they are grandfathered in. This is known as a nonconforming use. The Lodi ordinance provided that if the mobile home was absent from the lot for six months, the nonconforming use is discontinued. If a mobile home lot was vacant for six months, Lodi would refuse to reconnect water and electrical service when a new tenant wanted to rent the lot. The Court found that the mobile-home park owner was deprived of their property without due process of law because the ordinance imputes a tenant’s abandonment of a lot within a mobile-home park on the park’s owner.
State ex rel. Sunset Estate Properties, L.L.C., v. Lodi, Slip Opinion No. 2015-Ohio-790
