When I hear the words “rent control,” I think about housing units. Apartments, studios, houses, mobile homes. What I don’t think about is the ground beneath them, but I guess I should.
Because in Santa Maria, members of the North Santa Barbara County Manufactured Homeowners Team (well, that’s a mouthful!) are dealing with a problem that’s pretty unique. Members own their mobile homes, but not the ground beneath them, and they want that rent controlled!
For more than a year now, the “team” has been talking to city officials and mobile home park owners to try and come to a workable solution. What they got was not what they asked for. A long-term model lease (a proposal for mobile home parks in the area to model their long-term leases after) with no rent control, no reduction in the minimum percentage that rent can be raised annually. Annually? For a mobile home owner who’s stuck with the spot they purchased their house on? Sounds like a racket.
They are prepared to fight, team member Gary Hall said, and I hear the battle cry!
“Rent control! Rent control!” they shout. “We want an ordinance, not a model lease!”
Hey, the mobile home park owners aren’t happy either.
“Are my clients thrilled? No,” attorney Lisa Toke said of the three parks she represents. But, we can live with it, she said.
Her clients can only raise rent at exactly what the Consumper Price Index goes up by every year with a cap at 6 percent. Yeah, 6 percent! Can you believe that?
Seems high to me, and easy to live with for mobile home park owners. Seems a lot harder for someone who lives off Social Security and retirement—half of the city’s mobile home parks are designated for folks who are 55 and older.
Even Lompoc has a rent control ordinance in place for mobile home parks—and if you really think about that, it sounds a little crazy. Such a liberal policy for such a conservative city. Come on Santa Maria! Are you going to let them do that? Lompoc’s ordinance has been in place for more than 30 years and the best Santa Maria can come up with after a year of negotiating is a model lease that looks strikingly similar to leases residents are currently on.
And that old model lease exists only because 20 years ago, Santa Maria mobile home residents approached the City Council looking for a rent control ordinance (hmm, that sounds familiar). And the city decided a model lease was the way to go. A “solution” that really isn’t a solution.
How’d that work out for mobile home park residents? Oh, they’re still complaining about rent being raised by excessive amounts? Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself?
Although this recent model lease doesn’t give residents what they asked for, it will be enforceable—unlike the model lease program the city started in 1999. Park owners have been onboard with adding enforcement to the lease since this discussion began last year. And why wouldn’t they be when most of the terms are in their favor?
Hall thinks a rent control ordinance might be in order.
I hear the battle cry, and I’m all for it.
The canary tweets like a liberal freedom-taker. Send comments to [email protected].
