## Facts

- A mobile-home park in Rankin County operated since the 1950s with pads for mobile homes and recreational vehicles.
- After the City of Richland incorporated (1975), the property was zoned light industrial, making the park a lawful nonconforming residential use.
- The zoning ordinance allowed nonconforming uses to continue but stated they were not encouraged and could not be enlarged, expanded, or extended.
- For years, mobile homes were removed and replaced in the ordinary course without municipal objection.
- Cleveland MHC, LLC purchased the park in 2008 and asserted it received assurances from the zoning administrator that homes could be moved in and out without restriction.
- In 2011, the City began enforcing the ordinance to prohibit replacement of a mobile home once removed.
- The Mayor and Board of Aldermen adopted a resolution providing that if a mobile home was removed from a site, no other mobile home could be placed on that vacated site.
- Cleveland MHC argued the policy would eliminate the park “by attrition,” effectively ending the nonconforming use.

## Issues

1. Whether the City’s lot-by-lot interpretation and enforcement of the nonconforming-use ordinance to bar replacement of removed mobile homes was arbitrary, capricious, or illegal.
2. Whether the City’s action unlawfully interfered with the owner’s constitutionally protected right to continue a lawful nonconforming use and enjoy its property.

## Decision

- The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals and reversed and rendered the circuit court’s judgment.
- The Court held the City’s lot-by-lot interpretation reflected in the 2011 resolution was arbitrary and capricious and not supported by the ordinance.
- The Court held the City’s action unlawfully impaired Cleveland MHC’s right to continue the lawful nonconforming use and violated its constitutional right to enjoy its property.
- The result permitted continued operation of the mobile-home park as a nonconforming use, including replacement of units in the ordinary course.

## Legal Principles

- A lawful nonconforming use is a vested property right protected from arbitrary municipal termination.
- The right to continue a lawful nonconforming use runs with the land and does not end merely because ownership changes.
- The relevant “use” for nonconforming-use analysis is the established use of the property as a whole; a municipality may not redefine the use on a pad-by-pad basis to extinguish it.
- Zoning authorities must apply ordinances consistently and rationally; a sudden, unsupported shift in interpretation after years of contrary practice may be arbitrary and capricious.
- Municipal enforcement that effectively ends a lawful nonconforming use through gradual attrition, without a valid legal basis, is unlawful.

## Conclusion

The court rejected the City’s attempt to terminate a mobile-home park’s lawful nonconforming use through a lot-by-lot replacement ban, holding the interpretation arbitrary and illegal and protecting the owner’s vested, land-based right to continue the established nonconforming use.


Cleveland MHC, LLC v. City of Richland, 163 So. 3d 284 (Miss. 2015)