Float home rent arbitration bill goes to House

BOISE – Bayview developer Bob Holland pulled out all the stops Monday to fight legislation to allow binding arbitration in float home rent disputes, but the bill passed anyway.

SB 1433a already had passed the Senate on a 33-1 vote; on Monday, it cleared the House State Affairs Committee on a voice vote and headed for final passage in the full House. The bill was earlier amended in the Senate to remove a clause that would have effectively limited float home rent increases to 5 percent a year.

Holland, after the committee meeting, said, “It’s probably just something that’ll come out in litigation.”

Holland’s development manager and attorney, Erika Grubbs, told the committee that float home owners are wealthy out-of-staters who shouldn’t be “coddled.” Grubbs also told lawmakers that the bill targets “an illegitimate and fabricated need,” and said of float home owners, “It’s time they paid their own way in the world just like the rest of us.”

Dennis Scott, development manager for Waterford Park Homes in Bayview, told the panel, “You’ve been told that the reason for rent control is that marina owners are gouging them. … The state has created a very special class of citizens that doesn’t even require residency.” Scott said many float home owners are from out of state and use the float homes as their “second or third homes.” State Sen. Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, said after the meeting that half the float home owners are from Idaho, and most of the rest are from Spokane.

“All the bill does is sets up a process to find a resolution to a dispute,” Jorgenson said. “The fact that he would protest it so vigorously seems to indicate to me that he’s not interested in finding an equitable dispute resolution.” Jorgenson added, “Frankly, his actions in this bill are typical of his history of going ahead and doing things and asking for forgiveness afterwards.”

Holland’s Bayview developments have been involved in numerous disputes, including his destruction of valuable kokanee spawning beds while doing construction work in the lake without a permit. On Monday afternoon, a House committee overwhelmingly approved Senate-passed legislation to increase penalties for such violations from the current $2,500 to at least $10,000.

Grubbs, Holland’s attorney, accused sponsors of the float home bill of proposing an emergency clause just to beat a big rent increase Holland wants to impose on float homes on June 1.

+ Questioned by the committee, Scott said that increase is from $490 to $690 a month for some, and from $490 to $990 for others.

Grubbs told the committee she has a sailboat at a Hagadone-owned marina on Lake Coeur d’Alene that’s due to be renovated, and she’s expecting a rent increase after the upgrades. “I no more expect this Legislature to protect me from that rent increase than I expect those leprechauns that are out there today to give me a pot of gold to pay for it,” she said. State Rep. Phylis King, D-Boise, said Holland’s proposed rent increase doesn’t sound “reasonable,” which the law requires for float home rents on state-owned lakes.

Afterward, state Rep. Mary Lou Shepherd, D-Prichard, said, “I had owned one (float home) at Hudson Bay at one time, absolutely adored it.” At the time, she said, she paid $85 a month in rent, and “I thought that was a lot of money” for moorage for a home floating on state-owned waters. “I think they should have the right to arbitration when it’s such a massive increase,” Shepherd said.