The owners of the Skunk train using eminent domain powers may have opened eyes around the Mendocino Coast in ways heretofore unimagined.
Let's review the power that allowed the Skunk, aka Mendocino Railway, to acquire much of the old Georgia-Pacific mill site. California Public Utilities Code, Section 611 states, “A railroad corporation may condemn any property necessary for the construction and maintenance of its railroad.”
In California Public Utilities Code, Section 230 a railroad corporation is defined: “’Railroad corporation’ includes every corporation or person owning, controlling, operating, or managing any railroad for compensation within this State.”
Among the powers granted to railroad corporations by law: “The officers, agents, and employees of the corporation may enter upon the lands or waters of any person, for this purpose, subject to liability for all damages which they do thereto.”
Using the power of eminent domain is not simply a license to steal. In the case of the southern portion of the G-P mill site, Mendocino Railway or its parent company, Sierra Railroad, has promised to pay a reported $1.3 million. Of course, that sum seems ridiculously low for so many acres in such a prime piece of ocean side.
Readers who received the Skunk's glossy eight page mailer ironically titled, “The Little Stinker,” have undoubtedly glanced at the page 3 proposed development plan for the northern half of the old mill site. Take a good look at it and see if you see any allocations for schools or healthcare facilities.
This takes us to the heretofore unopened eyes. In most cases special districts have eminent domain powers too. California Health and Safety Code, section 32121 states, “Each local district shall have and may exercise the following powers…”
Among those, in subsection (d) is the authority “To exercise the right of eminent domain for the purpose of acquiring real or personal property of every kind necessary to the exercise of any of the powers of the district.”
Reading further in the Code, subsection (j) allows a healthcare special district to “To establish, maintain, and operate, or provide assistance in the operation of, one or more health facilities or health services, including, but not limited to, outpatient programs, services, and facilities; retirement programs, services, and facilities; chemical dependency programs, services, and facilities; or other health care programs, services, and facilities and activities at any location within or without the district for the benefit of the district and the people served by the district.”
“Retirement programs” or “other health care programs” would certainly encompass a skilled nursing facility (SNF). This leads us to the ever more dire situation at Sherwood Oaks in Fort Bragg, the only SNF on the coast. Along with a new, if more modest, hospital the Mendocino Coast desperately needs a new building for a SNF. For more on the situation at Sherwood Oaks look at the recent reports authored by Dr. William Miller in the AVA and elsewhere.
Of course, a new SNF, let alone a new overall healthcare facility, cannot be gained through eminent domain alone. It is here that the needs of our schools, our firefighters, and healthcare intersect with economics, and with affordable housing. A special district could theoretically apply eminent domain to a house that sits vacant much of the year to house firefighters, teachers, or healthcare workers, but that district is required to pay the owner of the property at fair market value. All of the above referenced types of local special districts are always strapped for money. The rubber doesn't often hit the reality road on the Mendocino Coast, where any number of well-heeled property owners exist yet we can't find housing for nurses or teachers. Perhaps the local special districts need to be more aggressive in promoting or advertising for property owners to make bequests of houses that could be used by the teachers, firefighters, healthcare workers, and others who provide us with the most valuable of services everyday. Lord knows we are not going to need a new hospital or new school buildings if we can't provide adequate housing to the teachers and nurses we are presently hanging onto. These special districts that provide education and healthcare should be hammering the well-to-do with even more donation pleas than Save the Redwoods, the Nature Conservancy, or any other seeming do-good operation.
According to Housing Action Team (HAT) statistics, hundreds of Mendocino Coast houses have been purchased by investment groups. Reportedly, eighty of those are owned by a single entity in Boise, Idaho. For the most part those houses are used as short term rentals, often at an expense of hundreds of dollars per day. Imagine how many days a teacher or nurse could afford to live in a home at $300 or $400 or $500 a day!
There are some complexities to the housing issue though. We cannot punish all the real folks who are VRBO-ing their homes or doing the equivalent of AirBnB off the record and under the table because some of those people are having to rent out part or all of their homes in order to make ends meet. Some of your teachers, firefighters, healthcare workers, and others you rely on for services have been forced for years to rent out or share their housing just to get by economically. It would be embarrassing and, I think, wrong to name any, but I am sure many readers would be aghast at the seemingly prominent figures who fall into that category, prominent in the widespread acknowledgment of their contributions to our communities but certainly not prominent in terms of bank accounts.
If the well-off of the Mendocino Coast and the investment groups using our housing as expensive short term rentals don't contribute their share toward offering housing to the folks who provide services, those temporarily occupying the short term rentals or ultra expensive second and third residences will find themselves vacationing here in an area with more and more deficient schools, hospitals, and fire departments. After that they won't have waiters and waitresses and chefs to feed them. Hopefully, those rich folks might see the writing on the wall before it is too late. Maybe the Hart brothers, the powers-that-be behind Mendocino Railway and the Skunk, could start the ball rolling in the right direction.
Wouldn't it be nice if our school, healthcare, and fire districts could declare eminent domain on largely vacant second or third or fourth homes of the ultra rich and the properties being used by investment groups as short term rentals and get the same kind of bargain basement price deal the Skunk is getting for a big chunk of the Fort Bragg mill site?
Cedar Ridge Rest Home operated in Ft Bragg for over 30 years until they were forced out of business by California’s restrictive laws. Private rest homes cannot compete with religious non profit corporations in our bureaucratic tyranny system. Mendocino County did not learn from Jim Jones. Don’t drink the Kool Aid of religious corporations with agendas that do not match public needs.