California vineyard owner fined $120,000 for offering free housing to employee

A California vineyard owner is suing Santa Clara County after officials fined him for allowing his longtime employee to live in an RV on his property for years.

Michael Ballard, whose family owns Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards in a town south of San Francisco, alleges he was fined a total of more than $120,000 after the county said he violated local zoning laws that ban anyone from living in an RV on public or private property, according to The Mercury News.

Marcelino Martinez, manager of the vineyard, which is around 2.6 million square feet (243,000 square meters), said his family lost their lease on a trailer they were living in years ago and had limited options for affordable housing in the area. The Ballard family agreed to allow them to live in an RV at the vineyards. Martinez, his wife and children have lived there for free since, 2013, according to The Mercury News.

“I couldn’t make a family homeless for arbitrary reasons,” Ballard told the newspaper. “The human impact exceeded any damage or nuisance that their continued living in the trailer was going to create.”

But in July 2019, the county began fining the Ballards $1,000 daily for the RV, then lowered the penalty to $250 a day, the vineyard owner said.

The county disputed that it fined Ballard $120,000 and said he refused to agree to deadlines to reduce the violations, according to the newspaper. Officials have made multiple offers to drastically cut fines if he removes the RV, they said.

The county was imposing “excessive fines” and violating the US Constitution with its actions against Ballard, his attorney Paul Avelar told The Mercury News.

Ballard doesn’t agree with the county spending so much time penalising him when it is facing greater issues.

“Just drive anywhere in the county, there are mobile homes parked all over the place. There are encampments everywhere you go,” he told the newspaper. “The problem is obvious and overt, yet they’re choosing to prosecute us in probably the least intrusive example of this, where we are letting someone live on private property in a private location and we’re not bothering anyone.”