SLO County sues Sunny Acres ranch owner over living conditions. ‘This is just unbelievable’
San Luis Obispo County has filed a lawsuit against local property owner Dan DeVaul and his 72-acre ranch, saying he has failed to comply with an existing court order to maintain health and safety.
The county also claims that illegal dwellings continue to exist on the property just outside the city limits of San Luis Obispo despite orders to mitigate the situation.
If successful, the lawsuit could take management of DeVaul Ranch — home to clean-and-sober living organization Sunny Acres — out of his hands.
Separately, conflicts within the Sunny Acres, Inc. nonprofit board of directors — on which DeVaul sits — have arisen that have put DeVaul in discord with some of the tenants on site.
Sunny Acres works people with drug and alcohol addictions, as well as homeless people and those with mental and emotional challenges. Program participants typically live and recover on DeVaul’s property.
The lawsuit, filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, requested a court-appointed receiver who would monitor the process of making the property at 10660 Los Osos Valley Road code compliant.
The property’s condition is in such extensive violation of health and safety codes that tenants on site and the adjacent community are endangered, the county argued.
In response, DeVaul said that he’s doing what he can to improve the site and willing to work with the county on remedies, but seeks ongoing discussions outside of court.
“I have a lot of problems,” he told The Tribune in an interview. “I have health problems. I have landlord/tenant problems. I have county problems. My partner broke her femur.”
DeVaul, 78, said he has had ongoing talks with a county attorney and plans to continue to discuss resolutions with a lawyer.
“I want to talk to them before this has to go to court,” DeVaul said. “This takes time to do this stuff and the county isn’t really concerned about that.”
SLO County lawsuit says Sunny Acres violates laws
The complaint alleges violations of county, state and federal laws and accuses DeVaul of defying a permanent injunction ordered by the court in 2013.
DeVaul’s 72-acre property — which includes an assortment of dwelling spaces — has had numerous code enforcement violations dating back to 2001, related to junk, grading and stockpiling, unpermitted construction and illegal habitation, county attorneys wrote in the complaint.
A 2013 permanent injunction banned people from residing in unpermitted storage facilities on the property with the exception of a legal farmhouse and DeVaul’s apartment, along with any other structure deemed legal through permitting — while prohibiting occupancy of mobile homes, sheds, garden units, tents and recreational vehicles.
Since then, Sunny Acres obtained a building permit for a 14-bedroom residence with a large common area and a detached bathroom facility, the lawsuit said. Though it was built, that building never received a certificate of occupancy because it did not have a permitted water source for the number of people expected to live there, according to the lawsuit.
Inspection finds illegal structures, unpermitted utilities
In June 2021, the county inspected the property with a search warrant.
Inspectors found people living in illegal structures, including sheds and RVs; unpermitted electrical, plumbing and septic; and storage on the property that “has substantially increased since May of 2013 in violation of the permanent injunction and county code,” according to the complaint.
Inspectors also cited DeVaul for illegal grading and a dirt fill of about 150,000 cubic yards within a designated flood hazard area.
DeVaul has been issued a notice of violation with various compliance deadlines that Sunny Acres has failed to meet, county attorneys Rita Neal and Jon Ansolabehere noted.
“Given the history of the property and defendants’ track record and obstinance, plaintiffs have zero faith that (Sunny Acres) will actually remedy the violations on the property, let alone remedy them within a reasonable timely fashion,” the lawsuit stated.
“This new lawsuit is an unfortunate but necessary step,” Anselobehere said in an email to The Tribune. “The county will be working with the tenants through another receivership process to see what options are available to them and to minimize impacts to that vulnerable group.”
DeVaul, however, argues that he’s doing the county a favor by allowing addicts and others who otherwise would be homeless to stay on his property. Currently, he said there are 36 tenants on site.
“I do help them because I take in people who have nowhere else to go, like people with sex offender registration,” DeVaul said. “I’m literally doing the county a service.”
According to the Sunny Acres website, the organization was founded in 2001 and has cared “for as many as 73 and as few as 20 homeless addicts.”
“In 2015, we provided more than 11,000 bed nights while serving more than 32,000 meals,” read the website description. “We do this by being self-supporting.”
Could Dan DeVaul’s SLO ranch be sold?
Ansolabehere said informal talks with DeVaul haven’t been successful so far.
“The county does not see mediation helping in any way as Mr. DeVaul has created a situation that he cannot realistically or feasibly solve,” Ansolabehere said. “Delay and gamesmanship was Mr. DeVaul’s (modus operandi) previously and it continues to be his m.o.”
The county is pursuing a receivership appointment by the court, which would take management of the compliance of the site out of DeVaul’s hands.
A receiver is a person designated to hold in trust and administer property under litigation.
If ordered, a receiver would take “full and complete control of the substandard property” while coordinating the mitigation of the hazards, paying expenses related to taxes utilities and general maintenance, among other costs.
A receiver would have the authority to borrow funds and pay for construction necessary to correct the illegal conditions “with a lien on the real property.”
Attorney Jeff Stein said he is helping advise some tenants seeking to stay on site as issues are resolved.
“The county has been clear that they can’t just turn a blind eye and allow the circumstances to persist,” Stein said. “The dilemma is to balance the effort to keep unsheltered people housed while at the same time not having them be housed in unsafe fashion that the county sees and knows of and is obligated to remediate to rectify.”
The tenant community is “entirely in support of the county’s position that this is long overdue and should be enforced,” Stein said.
Stein added that mitigation efforts are entirely in DeVaul’s control, but also that the cost of doing so may force a ranch sale.
“The ownership of the ranch could go into bankruptcy, which would be very likely because I think the cost of the repair using the current prevailing rates would be probably enough to use up the entire value for the ranch,” Stein said.
Stein added: “There have been discussions about the ranch changing hands and Dan selling it. But he has been resistant to selling the ranch.”
DeVaul said there is a 25-year lease with the nonprofit to allow people to live at the property. The lease with Sunny Acres is 17 years in, which would reduce the value of the site were he to sell, he said.
Tenant speaks out about Sunny Acres conditions
DeVaul told The Tribune he was hoping to bring down the number of those dwelling on his property to below 25, which he felt would help resolve county concerns.
Joseph Kurtzman, a tenant who also serves on Sunny Acres’ seven-member nonprofit board, said that led to a motion on the board and a dispute about how that should proceed.
Kurtzman said DeVaul tried to evict 18 people from the property — including two board members — in recent months.
DeVaul also attempted to remove three board members from their positions as directors of the nonprofit, Kurtzman said.
Attorneys deterred DeVaul from proceeding with both measures, according to Kurtzman.
Kurtzman say tenants have made efforts to improve the property over the past two-to-three years, such as installing accessible sidewalks and bringing in bottled drinking water, while improving the quality of food Sunny Acres participants consume.
Tenants want to work with the county to remedy their situation so they can retain their housing, but DeVaul hasn’t been willing to engage, Kurtzman said.
Kurtzman said tenants in one building use a water softer to filter unpermitted water that comes through plumbing for non-drinking functions like washing dishes, but that’s still unsafe, he said.
Kurtzman said they believe that issue can be resolved, but “it’s difficult when the interest in doing so isn’t shared by the person who has to sign applications for well permits.”
Meanwhile, DeVaul said he is currently planning to build a well on site to provide a new water source, and has coordinated with a geologist, he said, but it’s taking time. (Kurtzman said tenants helped organize the well exploration.)
DeVaul also contends Sunny Acres, with his backing, is providing tenants with bottled water.
Kurtzman said the tenant community also is in support of removing the dirt fill the county says was placed within a floodplain.
In response, DeVaul said the conditions aren’t perfect but they’re much better than being homeless and he’s offering people places to stay.
Kurtzman also said that community members have been frustrated by how DeVaul has used money that’s allocated to the nonprofit, mostly generated through rent (tenants can pay low-cost rent or offer labor), along with some sales of agriculture produced on-site and other forms of revenue.
Kurtzman said DeVaul took money from a checking account funded by rent payments from residents that was earmarked for operating expenses.
DeVaul collects $50 per month per tenant as part of his lease agreement, though amounts vary tenant by tenant based on how much they pay versus a labor exchange, Kurtzman said.
But DeVaul cut off the nonprofit resident access to all the money in the checking account fund, “which created quite an emergency,” Kurtzman said.
“That was after failing to evict us,” Kurtzman added. “So it has felt like this series of efforts to break our will to stay in this community.”
Kurtzman said attempts to resolve issues have been met with resistance by DeVaul, whose son, James DeVaul, is also a director.
According to Stein, there is concern about whether, as a board member, DeVaul should be allowed to control “financial events that benefit him.”
“As I have been advised (by tenants), the way in which the finances of the Sunny Acres community have been operated have been that Dan has had total control over the distribution of money out of accounts that were funded by fees paid by the residents,” Stein said.
Property owner responds to money concerns, lawsuit
DeVaul fired back at the claims that there’s any problem with the use of funds on the nonprofit, or his role in determining expenditures, saying it’s mainly a management disagreement.
“I have a long history of paying my bills on time,” DeVaul said. “I’ve got a problem with one of the guys here at the program (Kurtzman) who just put himself into the arena of thinking he’s doing my job. He’s been collecting the program fees and he’s blocking my way of wanting to bring down the number of people we have here.”
DeVaul added that he hopes to remove Kurtzman from the nonprofit role because he feels like Kurtzman is trying to take over.
“It’s really getting crazy,” DeVaul said.
Kurtzman said the nonprofit tapped into funds from a different account than the one DeVaul blocked to pay the bills that were lapsing for gas and to cover clean drinking water.
“It was a crisis and we took actions for it to continue to operate,” Kurtzman said. “(DeVaul) created a nice space for people to be here, but we work seven-to-eight hours per day to be here, and he wasn’t contributing funds. The (nonprofit) organization was supporting him. The details of the folk hero narrative are backwards.”
DeVaul said he is working to remedy the situations presented in the county’s lawsuit and brought up by tenants like Kurtzman.
“We furnish these people bottled water,” DeVaul said. “We do everything we can. ...Even though we’re giving them bottled water, they say that’s temporary, so it’s not legal.”
He’s also “very worried” about the possibility of a new receivership. DeVaul said he paid $110,000 after a receiver was previously appointed to the property for code violation compliance.
DeVaul said he feels targeted by the county and says that he has been trying desperately to “make our operation better.”
“They want to perfect you know, but what they’re giving the homeless people is a long ways from perfect,” DeVaul said. “...They’re bossing me.”
DeVaul added: “I’ve supported people here at Sunny Acres with much reduced rent and they’re after me and trying to take over for me. People tell me thank you for helping these people who are down and out, but this is just unbelievable. The more I do, they more they come after me.”
This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 11:37 AM.
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