Mobile Home Rent Control Loses in Chula Vista Vote

Restrictive rent controls for mobile home parks were resoundingly defeated in a citywide mail-in election here that attracted only 35% of the registered voters.

A Wednesday vote tabulation showed that the rent ordinance lost by a greater than 2-to-1 ratio, receiving just 27% of the vote.

City Clerk Jennie Fulasz was disappointed by the poor ballot return percentage, explaining that she had expected about 50% of the city’s 58,000 registered voters to cast ballots in the city’s first vote-by-mail election.

The issue, which proposed an ordinance limiting mobile home rent increases to Social Security cost-of-living raises, drew 5,390 favorable votes and 14,400 ballots in opposition. The favorable vote tally failed to match the 8,780 registered voters who signed petitions calling for the special election.

“No question about it, we got trounced,” admitted Bob Flaugher, leader of the rent control effort. “I’m disappointed, of course. This just proves that you can buy anything. They (opponents) bought the election. They spent $14.38 a vote, and we spent 22 cents a vote.”

Flaugher also charged that some park owners “used scare tactics,” threatening their elderly tenants with eviction if they voted for the measure. Flaugher added that he may have erred in delaying the election until after the November statewide vote “because I thought we would have the best shot that way,” but he vowed to continue to fight the mobile home park owners until effective rent control measures are imposed.

Flaugher said he plans to seek a court ruling on whether the defeated measure is constitutional. If a court rules in his favor, he said, he will seek a court order invalidating the election on the grounds that erroneous information was given to voters by opponents indicating that the measure was “invalid and unconstitutional.”

City Atty. Tom Harron, in an impartial analysis in an informational pamphlet mailed out to all eligible voters, warned that the city would immediately file suit to test the validity of the new rent control initiative if it passed. Calling the measure unconstitutional, Harron said it failed to allow mobile home park owners a “just and reasonable” return on their property investments and would lead to lawsuits against the city.

Adeline Smith, a spokeswoman for the mobile home park owners who fought the rent control initiative, said she was “both pleased and dismayed” with the results.

“It was a waste of money--money which could have gone into a rental assistance program” to aid low-income elderly people affected by increasing rents, she said.

Smith said that the city’s mobile home rent mediation regulations had been strengthened recently on the recommendation of a committee composed of an equal number of park owners and tenants. Before the stronger ordinance was enacted in August, three months of negotiations were held with Flaugher and his group “to try to forestall this expensive election and reach an agreement,” she said.

Flaugher and his tenant committee turned down a park owners’ proposal that would have provided for submitting rent disputes to binding arbitration, limiting rent increases to 8% a year and creating a rental assistance fund for elderly mobile home tenants amounting to what the park owners group would spend to oppose the rent-control initiative. Smith estimated that the owners spent $150,000 in their campaign to defeat the measure.

Mayor Greg Cox, who signed ballot arguments opposing the measure, said the election “was a most unfortunate waste of money--not only the money that the city was forced to spend (about $40,000 for the special election) but also the exorbitant amount spent by the opponents and the lesser amount by the advocates.”

“We have a rent mediation ordinance now which may not be perfect, but which was worked out by a committee from both sides,” Cox added. “We feel that it can work and the City Council is committed to make it work. Maybe now that this election is over, it will be given a fair chance.”