SANTA PAULA : Rent Initiative Signatures Are Submitted to City

Mobile home residents in Santa Paula submitted enough signatures Thursday to put an initiative on the June ballot that would limit rent increases in their neighborhoods, the president of an activist group said.

Helen Currier of the United Mobile Home Owners’ Assn. of Santa Paula Inc. said the group qualified for the June primary when it submitted more than 2,000 signatures to the city clerk’s office.

“I feel relieved because we’ve been working so hard getting signatures,” Currier said.

The group, made up of residents of the city’s seven mobile home parks, began collecting signatures more than a month and a half ago.

Thursday was the deadline for qualifying the initiative, City Clerk Stacey B. MacDonald said.

The group needed 1,371 signatures, or 15% of the city’s 9,144 registered voters, to qualify, MacDonald said.

The city will determine within 30 working days whether the signatures are valid.

The initiative would restrict rent increases to $25 each time a mobile home is sold, and would allow park owners to automatically implement annual cost-of-living increases, Currier said.

Under the present rent-control ordinance, passed in 1984, park owners must apply for annual cost-of-living increases and may pass along the cost of improvements to tenants.

The initiative permits tenants to have rent control in their parks if more than 60% of them sign long-term leases.

Under the present ordinance, when 60% of a park’s tenants accept long-term leases, rent control is abolished.

About 8% of Santa Paula’s 25,000 residents, or about 2,000 people, live in mobile home parks, MacDonald said.