Fuckers...

After $4.7M in fines, California homeowners still erect new fence to block beach path

By Sam Mauhay-Moore

A group of homeowners have erected a fence to block off a walkway behind a quarter-mile-long stretch of coastside condos in Santa Cruz County amid a conflict spanning several years over whether or not the path should be accessible to the public.

The Rio Del Mar Beach Island Homeowners Association in Aptos installed the chain-link fence with plastic green panels on either end of the path last week with the hopes of blocking off beachgoers from using the roughly 25-foot-wide walkway behind their condos. This comes after the HOA’s 27 members were hit with more than $4.7 million in fines from the California Coastal Commission in December for penalties related to blocking the pathway from public access. 

Over the weekend, people visiting Rio Del Mar State Beach opted to walk on the sand or on the small streetside sidewalk in front of the condos, most of which are used as vacation rentals. 

“I don’t think people need to be walking behind people’s private property,” Lisa B., who owns a condo overlooking Beach Drive, told SFGATE. “I don’t prefer walking on the sand — that’s not my cup of tea. Yes, the sidewalks are sketchy in front of the houses. I don’t know about wheelchair access; I’ve not tried to put a wheelchair on there. But my opinion is, I think for them, it’s a privacy issue.”

This isn’t the first time the homeowners of Beach Drive have blocked off the walkway from the public: The California Coastal Commission has filed various violations regarding obstructions of the path since 2002, according to a recent cease-and-desist order filed against the HOA and Guarav Singh and Sonal Puri, who own the condo where the first fence was recently erected. 

According to the order, disputes over the ownership of the walkway have been ongoing since the 1980s, when the HOA was first formed. A storm damaged the walkway in 1980, leading the homeowners to apply for a coastal development permit to build a seawall behind the homes. 

Since then, multiple attempts by the homeowners to block the walkway from public use have been made, including the erection of a similar fence in 2018 that was then torn down by county workers. 

“Whether it’s trash cans blocking the sidewalk in front of the Beach Drive homes or newly erected fences blocking the coastal walkway, it sure seems like a lot of time, effort and money is being spent to prevent any sort of safe, public access to the area,” Rio Del Mar Supervisor Zach Friend told SiliconValley.com last week. 

On the HOA’s website, which is advertised on metal signs posted along the new fence, the group states that installment of the fences is legal pursuant to a 2022 superior court ruling that no record of a public easement on the walkway exists. The ruling followed a lawsuit between Santa Cruz County and the HOA that came out in favor of the homeowners. The coastal commission declined to provide comment, as litigation is still ongoing.

“For people to just come up off of the public beach and walk along that little small strip behind those houses and peer into their houses, for me, is completely unnecessary,” Lisa B. said.