Santa Clarita Rent-Control Issue Still Smolders

A movement to limit rent increases at mobile home parks in Santa Clarita failed to win support from the City Council last week but may bring concessions from park owners eager to avoid regulation, an industry expert said.

“If anything, there would be a tendency to moderate rent increases because of the threat of rent control,” said David Evans, regional director of the Western Mobilehome Assn., a statewide trade group for park owners. “They might raise rents 5% instead of 8%.”

George Kahabka, general partner in Polynesian Mobile Home Park, agreed: “It’s going to bring about a mood of restraint.”

About 60 residents of mobile home parks appeared at a City Council meeting Tuesday to support a rent-stabilization ordinance. It would tie rent increases to rises in the consumer price index but limit them to a maximum of 8%.

Council members opted for a cooperative approach instead. They invited both sides to a December meeting, where they hope to reach an agreement on voluntary guidelines. But they warned park owners that they would come down hard if rents started to soar.

Meanwhile, representatives of both camps have retreated to their respective corners to plan strategy. Park tenants--many of them elderly and dependent on Social Security--complain about rent increases that they say average between 8% and 10% a year, but have gone as high as 15%.

The Santa Clarita Mobile Home Owners Area Council, which represents park residents, is collecting data about rent increases at the 22 parks in the city and will compare those figures with increases in the consumer price index, which has hovered around 5% in recent years. Members hope that their findings will be so persuasive that the City Council will adopt a rent-control ordinance even though it was reluctant to do so last week.

The 2,200 spaces in Santa Clarita parks are home to more than 7,500 people paying rents of between $300 and $473 a month, said Don Wilder, president of the mobile home group.

Among them are Jeannette and Franklin Story, both in their 80s, who live on a fixed income and are just getting by. Their rent at Mulberry Mobilhome Park has just gone up 6.5% to $280.87 a month.

“We are living on our Social Security, and we’ve had four hospital bills since last December,” Jeannette Story said. “The prices of things now, and our hospital bills, it’s outrageous. We don’t go to picture shows. We don’t do anything. We don’t spend money foolishly.

“If it keeps going much higher,” she said of the rent, “well, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Thea Wilson lives at West Green Brier park, where rent has increased 8% a year in the past two years. She pays $473 a month.

“Even though I work, it’s a problem,” she said. “I don’t get a raise of 8% a year.”

Senior citizens at the park have been particularly hard hit, she said. “They are scared. They are facing, at the age of 60 or 65, the fact that in two years, they can’t afford to live here.”

On the other side of the issue are park owners, who say they are entitled to a fair return on their investments. Without a fair return, neither side benefits, Kahabka said. “Either you liquidate or things start falling apart.”

Kahabka advocates negotiating long-term leases with residents, a system he has used at a park outside Los Angeles County. He said nine months of bargaining with park tenants produced a five-year lease that ties rent increases to inflation but requires residents to absorb the cost of new government taxes for such things as roads.

Evans said several parks in Santa Clarita use long-term leases that specify the amount of annual rent hikes. “Some leases, which residents willingly signed, have increases above the CPI,” Evans said. “At Green Brier, the annual increases are 8%. My response is, ‘You knew when you signed the lease what the increase will be, so why are you complaining?’ If the CPI were 10%, the park owner would be locked into 8% and the residents wouldn’t be complaining. When they signed the lease, both sides took a risk.”

Evans, who advises park owners in an eight-county area from Los Angeles to Fresno, has scheduled a meeting Nov. 16 to assess how much rents have increased in Santa Clarita and why. That information will be forwarded to the City Council.

The ordinance proposed for Santa Clarita is patterned after one in Oceanside. The city of Los Angeles also restricts rent increases at mobile homes, tying them to inflation.