## Facts

- Property owners held a roughly 3.5-acre, triangular tract in the City of Royal Oak bordered by a railroad, Starr Road, and Benjamin Avenue, where mostly single-family homes were located.
- Since 1957, the city’s zoning ordinance classified the tract for one-family residential use.
- The tract could accommodate approximately 13–14 single-family houses or, if rezoned, a substantially higher-density apartment development.
- The surrounding area had mixed features, including predominantly single-family homes, some multi-family and commercial uses in the broader vicinity, and a nearby golf course.
- A multi-family structure existed on the tract predating the single-family classification; three older single-family houses on the tract would have required demolition under any redevelopment plan.
- Beginning in 1961, the owners repeatedly sought rezoning to allow multi-family use; the city denied those requests.
- The owners sued in 1966, alleging the single-family classification was unreasonable, arbitrary, and effectively prevented reasonable use of the land.
- The owners presented evidence that: (a) the land was worth more if developed as apartments; (b) a similar tract across the railroad had been rezoned for multi-family use; and (c) railroad proximity made single-family development less desirable because of noise, vibration, odors, safety concerns, and alleged financing difficulties.
- The city presented evidence that apartment development would increase traffic and congestion and that single-family development would generate a relatively modest traffic increase consistent with neighborhood conditions.

## Issues

1. Whether the one-family residential classification, as applied to the tract, was an unreasonable and arbitrary exercise of municipal police power lacking a substantial relation to public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.
2. Whether the classification was confiscatory as applied because it deprived the owners of due process by preventing any reasonable use of the property.

## Decision

- The trial court declared the one-family classification void as applied and enjoined the city from enforcing it against the owners’ tract.
- The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed, holding the owners did not rebut the ordinance’s presumption of validity.
- The court upheld the one-family classification as not arbitrary or unreasonable and not confiscatory because the property retained reasonable residential use.

## Legal Principles

- Zoning ordinances are presumed valid; the challenger bears the burden to show, with clear and satisfactory proof, that the regulation has no real or substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.
- A zoning ordinance is upheld if the question of its reasonableness is “fairly debatable”; courts will not substitute judicial judgment for legislative zoning choices where reasonable minds may differ.
- The fact that property would be more valuable under a different zoning classification does not, by itself, establish invalidity; loss of the most profitable use is insufficient.
- A regulation is confiscatory only if it effectively precludes reasonable use of the property, not merely the highest economic return.

## Conclusion

The Michigan Court of Appeals sustained single-family zoning for the tract, concluding that the owners showed only a reduced ability to realize a more profitable apartment use rather than an absence of reasonable use or a lack of public-welfare justification, and that the city’s judgment was at least fairly debatable.


Krause v. City of Royal Oak, 160 N.W.2d 770 (Mich. Ct. App. 1968)