Local, county, state, and federal candidates spoke about rent stabilization at Santa Maria’s Casa Grande Mobile Home Park on Sept. 12.
“The forum is to win support for mobile home issues from the candidates. The specific issue we are pressing forward on is rent stabilization,” Rancho Buena Vista mobile home resident and North Santa Barbara County Manufactured Homeowners Team President Gary Hall told the Sun. “Rent stabilization is one initiative taken up by [the team] and consumed a lot of time. If we are supported by candidates, we will be more successful with our efforts in the long run.”
Along with candidates acknowledging the issue, the homeowners team recently received a $4,000 grant to hire an attorney as they work with the city to make adjustments to Santa Maria’s enforceable model lease—a lease agreement that has a 6 percent ceiling on yearly rent increases for mobile home park spaces, but park owners aren’t required to use it—after a June 7 agreement to add it to the City Council’s agenda, Hall said.
“In 2019 we didn’t have legal representation where the model lease was passed, but our request for modifications were rejected or ignored,” Hall said. “We are so grateful to have the attorney this go-round to level the playing field.”
Santa Maria City Council 3rd District representative Gloria Soto is one of the officials who’s been advocating for more dialogue about rent control in council chambers. During her Sept. 12 presentation, Soto said that the council finally passed a motion that would allow Santa Maria to take a deeper look into the city model lease agreement.
“I’m eager to see what the outcome of that will be,” Soto said. “And my hope is that that outcome is an enforceable model lease, one that really ensures that every mobile home park is offering this to the residents and one that also ensures that we are putting a cap on these [unjust] rent spikes that we’ve been seeing.”
Protecting mobile home parks from sharp rent increases by putting housing trust funds in place is one of Soto’s solutions to housing affordability, which is one of her platform issues in 2022.
“That would increase our rent voucher program that we currently have, [or] use those funds to build affordable housing units or to be able to support first-time home buyers to really achieve that American dream,” she said.
Maribel Aguilera-Hernandez—a 4th District City Council candidate—said it’s important to preserve the home’s value rather than trying to control its rent.
“We looked at talking about rent control. It sounds great, except we’ve been trying for a really long time and it’s not getting anywhere,” Aguilera-Hernandez said.
Rent control depresses property values and landlords wouldn’t get as high of a return on their property, she said, so she proposed subsidized housing as a solution to spiking prices.
“We subsidize housing for low-income, and I think that is a different way if we cannot get anywhere with capping rent. We need to solve it. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Well, why do we continue to choose leaders that continue to think the same way?” Aguilera-Hernandez said. “That’s what I’d really like to focus on and look at creative solutions for solving everyday problems.”
This article appears in Sep 15-22, 2022.