Mobile Home Park Rent Control Narrowly Defeated in Westminster

Residents of mobile home parks in Westminster were frustrated and depressed Wednesday after narrowly losing a major rent-control initiative. According to unofficial results from the registrar of voters office, the margin was only 250 votes.

“We have only ourselves to blame,” said Dick Johnson, one of the leading supporters of Measure G, which lost in Tuesday’s election by 7,678 to 7,428.

He said that a get-out-the-vote campaign was late and fizzled. Even many mobile home park residents chose not to support the measure, which would have provided for binding arbitration of rent disputes and would have limited park rent increases to a percentage not more than two-thirds as great as that in the annual consumer price index.

Vickie Talley, a spokeswoman for the Irvine-based Manufactured Home Educational Trust, which represents park owners in Orange County, said she was pleased with the measure’s defeat.

“It’s a great feeling to know we’re not faced with what the other outcome would have brought. We believe that if the measure passed it would not have been in the city’s best interests,” Talley said.

The only city in Orange County with rent control at mobile home parks is San Juan Capistrano, Talley said.

There are about 2,900 mobile homes in Westminster.