CAPISTRANO BEACH : Rent Control Near for Mobile Homes

The tenants of Beachwood Mobile Home Park were in a jubilant mood Wednesday after the Dana Point City Council took a big step toward ordering rent control in the city’s two mobile-home parks.

“We’re ecstatic,” tenant Lillian Seaman said. “I hardly slept all night. We consider it a wonderful victory.”

After attempting to mediate two lengthy and bitter rent disputes in the city’s two trailer parks in the past two years, a frustrated council on Tuesday voted 3 to 2 to direct the city attorney to write a rent-control ordinance for the city’s 290 mobile-home park spaces and bring it back to the council within 30 days.

It was the Beachwood battle that prompted the council vote. Last summer, when park owner Anthony Sepe said he planned to increase rents 40% to 45% over the next five years, the tenants objected and turned to the council for help.

After six months of negotiations, the issue was once again placed in the council’s lap this week.

“This has been an ongoing issue ever since we’ve been a city,” said Mayor Bill Bamattre on Wednesday. “We’ve allowed the two parties the time to solve the issue themselves, but it’s become obvious they could not do that. Rent control was the last thing we wanted to look at, but their inability to solve the problems forced it.”

Spokesmen for the tenants claimed Sepe was asking for rent increases without properly maintaining the 35-year-old park. They pointed to cracked sidewalks, electrical problems, boarded-up public restrooms and a history of poor pool maintenance.

Bamattre acknowledged that Sepe had taken steps to fix some of the maintenance problems at Beachwood but “only when we had a gun to his head. What has been done has taken an inordinate amount of time to accomplish.”

Brent Swanson, an attorney who represented Sepe at Tuesday’s council meeting, argued against rent control, claiming most Beachwood tenants had already signed long-term leases at below fair-market value.

“If a rent-control agreement were passed, it would affect less than 40 (park) spaces in the entire city,” Swanson said. “In our park, residents pay, on an average, $100 less than fair-market value per month.”

Joanna Barnes, a spokeswoman for Dana Point Marina Mobile Home Estates, where similar problems arose in 1989, also spoke against rent control, calling it “severe and expensive.”

Councilwoman Eileen Krause and Councilman Michael Eggers supported the anti-rent-control sentiments.

“I don’t want the city getting involved in private business,” Krause said. “I think this is truly a problem between the people and park owners, and they should resolve it.”