Mobile Home Rent Control Extended

At the urging of more than 100 mobile home owners in attendance, the County Board of Supervisors voted to extend a rent-control ordinance Tuesday.

The ordinance, which limits rent increases for spaces to 5% a year, was due to expire Dec. 15.

Mobile home residents, most of them elderly, feared that they would lose rent control if the ordinance expired. The revised ordinance has no expiration date.

Mural Torrance, representing the Mobile Home Owners Alliance, submitted a petition with 747 names urging the supervisors to keep the rent-control ordinance on the books.

However, he also complained about a provision that the supervisors inserted in the ordinance last December that benefits mobile home park owners.

The provision, which stemmed from a federal court decision, allows park owners to raise the rent on spaces to any level they wish when a mobile home is sold.

Torrance said the provision, called vacancy decontrol, has had a chilling effect on mobile home sales. He said that in one park, rent for a space went from $311 to $528 a month after the home was sold.

“They lose interest rapidly,” he said.

David Evans, representing the Western Mobile Home Assn., said his group of park owners opposed any move by the supervisors to eliminate the vacancy decontrol provision.

But the supervisors said they would reconsider the provision after January when two new people take their seats on the board. They said they may remove it or put a cap on rent increases that park owners can charge after a home is sold.

The rent-control ordinance was adopted in 1981.

It applies to 1,555 spaces in 24 parks in the unincorporated area of the county.