Kneeland Glen "Owner" Won’t Leave Without a Fight

Arcata CA

Description

According to the Lost Coast Outhouse, the "owner" of the Kneeland Glen Farm Stand is feeling rebellious: Facing Eviction, Kneeland Glen Farm Stand Owner Calls on Community for Help, Says She Won’t Leave Without a Fight On Oct. 21, while the farmstand was operating, my employees were served papers telling us that we need to vacate the property by December 31. It had been posted by my landlords the NorthCoast Regional Land Trust. My heart is broken. I would like to run my farmstand and continue to serve my community as I have since 2009. Around late May of this year at the demand of the land trust, I re-homed my little mixed Corgi dog Tootsie. Although Tootsie’s allowing to be at my farmstand everyday had been written by the land trust into my lease. As Tootsie began to age, I recognized she exhibited behaviors that were not acceptable. I took full responsibility for Tootsie’s actions and for the delay it took me in recognizing that my 14-year-old dog with cancer had become a problem. Five months ago, I removed her from the property forever. She has not returned and will not return. I heard nothing thereafter from the land trust regarding Tootsie. I believed the matter had been resolved. After that, I also checked with the county to inquire about whether my farmstand was compliant with existing county land-use ordinances. I was told through my attorney Neal Latt that my operation was a “legal nonconforming use.” This was conveyed to the land trust. I also reached out through a friend to the California Coastal Commission to inquire whether there was any enforcement action opened that concerned my stand. I was told that there wasn’t. It was also made clear with respect to my stand that the Coastal Commissions concerns pertained to the counties land-use ordinances for the property. Accordingly, when the county told me that I was a “legal nonconforming Use” it was obvious that my operation of the farmstand was grandfathered in, that it was a non-issue from a regulatory standpoint. The land trust has always known that I sold handmade goods from other small local producers at my stand in addition to what I produced on my husbands family’s ranch in Kneeland. In fact, Executive Director Dan Ehresman would frequently buy such products from the farmstand. It was never a problem before and if Dan or the land trust mistakenly wrote its permit application to the Coastal Commission in such a way that did not acknowledge that I was grandfathered in as legal nonconforming use, I am committed to working with them and the coastal commission to address this if it becomes an issue. My farmstand supports many small producers and I do not ask for a profit from sales of their products in my store. When you buy a loaf of homemade bread, local meat, eggs or other fruits and veggies at my stand and not grown by me, please know that money from these sales goes to the small makers and producers. Occasionally one of them slips me a $20 to put towards the rent, but that is it. If the land trust succeeds in driving me out, this community should know that the legal nonconforming use will be lost forever. My stand is an integral part of this community and I am simply asking the land trust to maintain the relationship in service to this community. I am calling on the community to assist me. I will not leave without a fight. Dear Kathy, I write as someone who is sincerely sympathetic, having been evicted, myself, many times. The first thing you need to accept is that you do not own the property and so there is no way that you can win this battle. There is no exit strategy that does not include your departure, in the long term. Everything else is details. Property owners know that the law is on their side. They enjoy the imbalance of power and derive security from it as well as a steady steam of monthly income, from you, and people like you, which allows them to employ lawyers, which further increases the imbalance of power. Why the United States, California, and Humboldt governments see it in the citizens' best interests to be renters, and subordinate, instead of owners, and equals, is a mystery that is easily clarified when you realize that politicians are all lawyers and owners of rental properties, and benefit handsomely from the current state of affairs, and have no incentive to see anything change. Hundreds of thousands of business owners during this economic collapse have been placed in the same quandary, as their businesses have been forcibly closed by COVID-19, but their business property leases continued to accrue. Many owners suspect that this is not a coincidence and that after they are forced out of business, the property owners will use the site to restart the business they built, and to claim their clientele, while they stand aside, helpless to intervene in the stealthy separation of business, from owner. It's likely that the owner of the property you were using has done just this - has entered into negotiations with others to use your space to deliver your service to your customers, or even been contacted, pre-emptively, by others, whom envied your success and conspired to destroy your business and to replace you with someone more cooperative. This acts as a reminder, again, of how important it is to own the property that you intend to build a business at, as, otherwise, you are, at worst, vulnerable to exactly this sort of sabotage of your business relationships, and, at best, always dependent upon the property owner for the success of your business. Where do we go from here? My advice is that you give some thought to going nomad. As things stand right now my guess is that you don't even own the building or shelter you operate(d) your business in, nor the land beneath it. I think what you need is a trailer. Or maybe a cargo container. With some awnings, and some windows. Like a storefront that you can move. Maybe good enough that you can lock it up and keep your goods inside, overnight. With a trailer, and a vehicle to move it, you can serve many different communities, bring foot traffic to five or six or seven different stores, on different days. Or you can move around, until you find a better spot. But at least you have mobility. Maybe set up a website so people know your schedule and have a way to get in touch with you if they have a place for you to operate from. I know you want to fight. My point is, you can't win. Now that you accept that, you can better plan how to conduct your retreat from the battlefield so as to make it as expensive as possible to those whom seek to evict you. You can force them to file court papers and serve you with a real eviction notice, backed by Humboldt County, for instance, and not accept their lawyer's demand. Because you know you are going to do this, and the owner does not, you can use this time to prepare your defense - that is, to compose an Answer, so that, when you are served with the legal papers, you have time to print the Answer and jump through the various service-of-process and legal-filing hoops required by California law. This also creates a paper trail for people in the future who might be thinking of renting from the owners, and can act as a warning to future vegetable sellers that these people may, later, evict them, when they think it is in their best interests. So you would be doing your community a favor. Speaking of paper trails, seeing as the "owner" is a government agency, you can also file a Freedom of Information Act request for all of their emails. The Lost Coast does it all the time. Ask LCO - or Hank Sims - to show you copies of the forms they have filed, or, if LCO are uncooperative, file an FOIA request for copies of all the FOIA requests that LCO had filed during calendar year 2020 and just copy what they did. Easy peasy. Let me know if you need any help with that. I hope that this has given you food for thought, but, also, faith in yourself. Don't waste your money hiring a lawyer. They are predators. They cannot help you. Or, rather, they CAN hep you, by telling you what I just told you, but they won't, because it doesn't put any money into their pockets. You cannot win this battle but you can still strike a blow for freedom of renters from oppressive owners and their government lackeys, and gain valuable experience, which, some day, you may share with others. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. It's POLITICAL advice. Lawyers are, mostly, IMHO, people who enjoy lying, and stealing, and getting away with it. That is, most of them are un-indicted criminals of one sort or another, albeit, with college degrees. Keep that in mind. Good luck.