Two different issues here – one, the hotels/restaurants, was addressed in a different thread:
(bolding mine)
No controversy there IMO.** They signed a contract saying they have no entitlement to operate when the park does not.** End of story. No sympathy.
As for residences, there’s that line in the above-linked report:
(Bolding mine, again.)
IOW this cabin** is NOT supposed to be the person’s sole or primary homestead.** We would have to read the master deed to see what restrictions and requirements were explicitly placed on the lease, and if the Park Service may have been derelict in not enforcing that clause and allowing it to become a place of permanent domicile and therefore negligently created an embarrassment for themselves and a hardship for the tenants.
IIRC in cases where someone owns a cabin but not the land it sits on, they usually can expect to have the status of tenants and be entitled to an easement to access the housing. But people may become misled by how, especially out West, a lot of homes and businesses are on generic Bureau of Land Management lands, which means federal property that the government leases or franchises to those who would occupy or use the land for authorized purposes and to which the rights commonly accruing a lessor or tenant apply. And that is **different **from land that is actual part of an operating federal installation, such as a National Park, Forest, Monument, or Recreation Area, which can be closed and have access denied. Those displaced persons in Nevada may have mistakenly believed their lots’ status was the former, or thought “oh, no way they could close all this desert, they’ll just shut down their actual facilities but leave the accesses alone”.
No, it’s “a shutdown of nonessential government activities” which includes the Parks and that means the Parks, all they contain, not just the Visitor Center office. And hey, nobody gets fired for obeying the letter of the law.