Efforts to Decontrol Mobile Home Rents

Why is everyone picking on us? We’re mobile-home owners in Carson who worked hard all our lives. We try to be good citizens. We raised our kids. We pay our bills on time. We pay taxes like everyone else, and some of us managed to save a little money for our old age. Now park owners are trying to “get rich quick” at our expense by decontrolling space rents. When do we get a break?

It’s the American Dream to have a home of your own. Buying a mobile home was the answer to our American Dream--a house we could afford to make payments on and still live in modest comfort on our small income. Do away with space rent control and you will see “sky is the limit” increases that will force us to seek help from some welfare agency--or lose our homes. Forced out on the street, we would have no place to go. Even if we could find an apartment, we could not afford the current rents.

We have had the protection of space rent control in Carson since 1979. Park owners have tried, unsuccessfully, time after time, to get rid of it. In 1980 they asked the state Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional. The court said “No.” The courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, have reaffirmed cities’ right to protect citizens through rent control ordinances.

In California, many cities and several counties have rent control. Rent control is a legitimate vehicle to safeguard mobile-home owners and at the same time does not deny park owners the opportunity to make a profit. It implements the free-enterprise system. A park owner who runs a well-managed park, regularly maintained with adequate but reasonable rents, should prosper. It is the poorly managed parks that have been grossly neglected that are in trouble, and no amount of money will bring them back to acceptable standards. That’s when the owner decides to sell! Then blames rent control!

Please do not sign the decontrol of rents petition. Don’t be a party to helping the decontrol forces destroy hundreds of Carson mobile-home residents who cannot afford to go anywhere else. We applaud Rosemary Marble, who pointed out in her Letter to the Editor (Times, May 26) that decontrol of rents will have a trickle-down effect on the economy of Carson. Merchants beware. If this petition gets enough signatures to appear on the ballot in November and wins, your revenues will be sorely affected. Taxes will have to be raised to take care of all the people getting subsidies.

Let’s get rid of this petition for decontrol of space rents. We must act now!

KATHY HOSA

Carson