Santa Clarita OKs a Cap of 6% on Rent Increases at Mobile Home Parks

Santa Clarita City Council members approved a tough ordinance Tuesday night to limit rent increases at mobile home parks, saying retirees and low-income families need the protection.

The product of 10 months of negotiations between city officials, park owners and residents, the ordinance originally proposed an 8% cap on yearly rent increases.

But the council, to the delight of about 200 mobile home park residents who packed the council chambers, unanimously lowered the cap to 6%.

The ordinance will tie rent increases to the consumer price index, up to a maximum of 6% annually.

Council members said they were philosophically uncomfortable with rent control but had to protect low-income residents who could not afford spiraling rents in the city’s 17 mobile home parks. “It isn’t that we want to put in rent control,” Mayor Jo Anne Darcy told park owners in the audience.

During a two-hour hearing, park residents pushed for the 6% cap and seven other modifications to the ordinance. David Evans, a member of the Western Mobile Home Assn., a park owners group, complained that the residents had negotiated in bad faith.

“I feel like we need to start all over again,” Evans said. “I feel like we’ve been betrayed.”

Formal negotiations on the ordinance between park owners and residents began in February, but the foundation for the measure was laid in 1988 when owners of the 60-space Desert Gardens Mobile Home Park announced they were shutting down the park to build a shopping center. Because of the area’s rapid growth, the site had become ideal commercial space, the owners said.

At the time, mobile home residents predicted that the demise of Desert Gardens would set off a spate of closures, with park owners trying to cash in on rapidly rising property values in the region.

In response to pleas from mobile home park residents, the City Council passed an emergency moratorium on park closures. When the measure expired this past summer, the council revamped its zoning ordinance to make it more difficult to close a mobile home park.