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3 <br /> <br />Redevelopment and other threats. Tenants can also be displaced because their buildings have <br />expiring rent restrictions, or are converted, torn down or redeveloped, the next topic of the <br />report. This can involve both publicly assisted properties, where cities or counties typically <br />have attached restrictions, and the issues are effective monitoring and enforcement of those <br />restrictions, as well as ensuring that with any new public assistance, the most effective and long <br />lasting protections are obtained. In some cases city housing code enforcement can lead to <br />displacement of innocent tenants, necessitating tenant protections. Even where displacement <br />actions occur in the absence of any government assistance, however, a number of cities have <br />turned to their basic police powers to enact protections. This may include imposing <br />replacement housing obligations on private displacers, or relocation payments and assistance <br />to displaced tenants, or temporary periods in which tenants are protected from rent increases <br />or no cause evictions. In some cases these approaches raise novel legal questions about the <br />extent of local government authority to act, which are discussed in this section. <br /> <br />Manufactured home parks. Next, manufactured home parks are discussed, and the unique <br />existential threats many of them face, due most often to redevelopment pressures or <br />deteriorating infrastructure systems. There are a number of different ways that cities and <br />counties can encourage preservation of these valuable assets, from comprehensive plan <br />commitments, enacting zoning protections, playing important roles in a park closing process, to <br />providing financial assistance to upgrade either a community’s infrastructure (sewer, roads)or <br />to replacing older homes in the park with newer ones. <br /> <br />Homeowners threatened by property taxes. The FHIC also requested that the report address <br />ways to minimize displacement of lower income homeowners facing unaffordable increases in <br />property taxes. The next section of the report details a series of mostly state programs and <br />provisions designed to reduce the property tax burden for certain eligible taxpayers. We <br />recommend that the most useful thing cities and counties can do in this area is to ensure <br />vulnerable homeowners are aware of the opportunities that already exist to minimize their tax <br />burden. In some cases homeowners should automatically benefit, in others they will have to <br />apply. <br /> <br />Just Cause eviction. Lastly, the report addresses an important but often misunderstood tenant <br />protection measure, which is good cause or just cause eviction. By establishing a good cause <br />requirement, a city simply extends the protections typically available to tenants in publicly <br />assisted housing to tenants in private housing. Tenants would finally know why they are being <br />asked to vacate, and although they would likely accept that outcome in most cases, they would <br />then have the opportunity to challenge baseless or retaliatory actions in such cases. Good <br />cause protections have been enacted in a number of jurisdictions, either for tenants generally <br />or for certain subgroups of tenants. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />INTRODUCTION <br />