County supervisors amend zoning to protect senior mobile home parks

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Almost 7,000 seniors populate housing authority waitlists for affordable senior housing in Santa Barbara County.

“In the face of such high demand, the preservation of existing affordable housing, including mobile home parks, is clearly important,” county planner Lila Spring said at the July 15 Board of Supervisors meeting. “However, the county lacks regulations to prevent the conversion of senior mobile home parks.”

But by the end of the meeting, that was no longer the case. 

Supervisors passed zoning ordinance amendments to preserve existing mobile home parks in the unincorporated areas of the county and prevent the conversion of senior mobile home parks to all-ages parks. The move impacts 11 senior mobile home parks and eight mobile home parks in the county, including Del Cielo Mobile Estates, a longtime senior park in Orcutt that changed ownership in 2024 and has pushed to become an all-ages park. 

New Del Cielo management, Harmony Communities, and longtime park residents have been at odds over the conversion push, and county supervisors passed an urgency ordinance banning those kinds of conversions last October, later extending it for a year until the county could come up with a more permanent level of protection. Del Cielo’s owners sued the county over that decision last year, and the suit is ongoing.

In May the county Planning Commission voted to recommend the proposed ordinance changes, which include a senior mobile home park overlay in areas of the county where those senior parks already exist, to the Board of Supervisors.

“The overlay is intended to promote the use of mobile homes as an accessible housing option,” Smith told supervisors. 

As part of the changes, the county will require 80 percent of the sites in senior mobile home parks be occupied by a resident who’s 55 years old or older and that the mobile home be that resident’s primary residence. Enforcement, Planning and Development Director Lisa Plowman said, will be complaint-based. 

“We would investigate that and work with them to determine if there was a violation and then we would work with them to correct that violation,” she said. 

Del Cielo resident Gary Halter thanked the board for moving so quickly on putting the protections in place

“Senior parks are very special places for our older population in a multitude of ways,” he said during public comment. “Unfortunately, I am less hopeful for Del Cielo under the ownership of Harmony Communities. Harmony Communities has deliberately ignored the moratorium that was put into place by this body.” 

Instead, management is putting the word out to real estate agents that park home sales should be labeled for all ages, instead of for seniors, Halter said. He added that senior residents in the park are often denied access to the clubhouse, where historically the park community has gathered for exercise, bingo, and coffee. 

“I now watch my neighbors sell their homes, who just don’t want to live like this anymore, which only plays into Harmony’s hands. They are schoolyard bullies in suits,” Halter said. “Like bullies do, they look for weaknesses, emotion, that moment when we flinch so they can pounce.” 

Nick Ubaldi, the regional property manager for Harmony, told the Board of Supervisors that the property management company continues to believe that Del Cielo is an all-ages park and that it was illegally operating as a senior park. 

“For the record, this ordinance is unfair to families looking for housing within the county,” Ubaldi said during public comment. “Legally, Del Cielo has always been an all-ages park. All the park did recently was update the rules to reflect this reality.” 

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino pushed back on Ubaldi.

“The owners’ position, honestly, of claiming that we are discriminating against poor families, when he’s got 80-year-olds sitting next to him asking for protection, just baffles me,” Lavagnino said. “It just seems a little strange.”

Supervisors passed the amendments 4-0. Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson recused himself due to what he said was a recently inherited mobile home.

This article appears in Jul 24 – Aug 3, 2025.