Council Seeks Solution to Mobile Home Rent Disputes : Housing: Officials ask park owners and tenants for ideas on preventing price gouging. A questionnaire drew little response from renters.

The City Council is enlisting owners and tenants at mobile home parks to devise a plan to prevent rent-gouging.

Council members, who are divided over how to regulate rents, instructed the city staff last week to meet with representatives of tenants and park owners to review the possibilities.

The city staff will incorporate that information, and suggestions from council members, into an ordinance that will be considered in draft form by the council Feb. 24.

A vote on the ordinance will be taken in March. The council plans to adopt permanent regulations before the mid-March expiration of a temporary moratorium on rent increases.

About 200 tenants and several park owners attended Wednesday night’s council meeting to review results of a survey of the city’s 19 mobile home parks and to discuss regulations.

Council members expressed disappointment that the survey questionnaire, designed to gather information about rents and living conditions, drew responses from occupants of only 19% of the city’s 1,659 mobile homes.

“I interpret that to mean that this is not nearly the burning issue we thought it was,” Councilwoman Paula Lantz said.

Tenants who say they have been treated unfairly by park owners have been calling for rent control for months. The tenants have also started a recall campaign against Mayor Donna Smith and Councilman Boyd Bredenkamp, charging that they have been unresponsive to their demands.

One tenant, Mary Llewellyn, said many residents did not respond to the questionnaire mailed to them because they were intimidated by park management.

“A lot of people were afraid they were going to be hassled if they answered the survey,” she said.

The survey showed that the average monthly rent for a mobile home space in Pomona has risen from $210 to $275 in five years, an average increase of 7% a year.

But in a few parks, rents have increased much more. In Westland Estates, for example, the rent climbed over five years from $154 to $404.

Councilman Ken West said some parks are in drastic need of repair and that rents may well skyrocket to pay for those improvements.

Lantz agreed, saying, “The living conditions in some of the parks in this city are deplorable.”

The councilwoman accused some park owners--and tenants--of being greedy. She said proposals by tenants for major rent rollbacks are unrealistic and that it is also wrong for park owners to charge tenants for every improvement in a facility when the improvements are raising the property’s value to the owner’s benefit.

Duane Solomon, city housing coordinator, told the council the survey indicates that 44% of the residents of mobile home parks are paying 30% or more of their gross income for rent. This is a heavy burden, he said, but it is near the average for all renters in the city.

Lantz said she finds it difficult to justify spending tax revenue to regulate rents in mobile home parks when there may be 60,000 other residents who have just as much trouble paying for other kinds of housing.

But Lantz and other council members said they are willing to consider setting up mediation and arbitration systems to resolve mobile home rent disputes.

Councilman Willie White suggested the city also explore the possibility of helping mobile home owners buy their parks.

West said the city should examine ways to assist needy tenants in paying rent.

But Councilman Tomas Ursua said the city does not have the financial resources to help buy parks or to subsidize rents significantly.

The city attorney offered a proposed ordinance to the council that would limit annual rent increases to 8% a year, or 80% of the increase in the consumer price index, whichever is lower.

Ursua called it a “very good ordinance,” but other council members offered a variety of other approaches.

City Administrator Julio Fuentes said the staff will ask tenants and park owners to select four representatives each to meet with the staff to discuss regulatory options.