Wednesday, April 18, 2012

ARIZONA SETS PRECEDENT FOR MAINE!

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a woman in Maine who was having difficulty accepting the "new rules" her community was imposing in regard to her ability to sell her park model. Since the park model concept is relatively new in her state, she was having some difficulty understanding where she could go for help to understand why her right to dispose of her property was being oppressed by the community management.

She indicated that she was going to peaceably appeal in letter form and would keep me posted as to the outcome. Yesterday we spoke in length after she received notice that the rules were non-negotiable and that if she did not remove the sign from her window, she would be in violation of the community rules.

Since Arizona set a precedent in 2012 with SB1146 and HB2255 in regard to "park model rights to sell" and changed the language of the Arizona Revised Statute pertaining to eviction "without" cause (see links below), Maine may just have a leg to stand on. Although the magnitude of park model ownership in Arizona is much larger, the bigger issue is individual liberty and equal protection under the law.

It is my understanding in speaking with this Maine resident that there is no statute or act which pertains to park model owner rights in her state. She states that park models are still defined as "camping trailers" without any differentiation between these types of recreational vehicle properties which most closely resemble a manufactured home instead of a typical camping trailer or other recreational vehicle such as a motor home, travel trailer or fifth wheels.

Unlike Most RV's, park models cannot simply be unhooked and pulled out without considerable expense because of the costly process of dismantling the improvements made on the lot as park models are not built to travel from site to site and require direct hook up to sewer and utilities and often have on-site improvements which normally cannot be moved without considerable expense and damage to such improvements.

I love the fire in the spirit of the woman who is trailblazing for others in her state. Hopefully we can set the record straight about what type of authority land owners have over the individual liberty of it's residents.
We will keep you all posted. Please help us review the Maine Constitution Declaration of Rights;
http://www.maine.gov/legis/const/

According the an excerpt of the 5000 Year Leap p.172 Justice George Sutherland of the US Supreme Court once told the New York State Bar Association: It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual-the man- has three great rights, equally sacred from the arbitrary interference; the right to his LIFE, the right to his LIBERTY, the right to his PROPERTY...The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave. (Principal or Expedient? Annual Address to the New York State Bar Association, 21 January 1921, p.18)