City Considers Mediation for Mobile Homes : * Property: Under the proposal, binding arbitration would be used to settle rent disputes if a mediator can’t resolve the issue. Neither tenants nor park owners are happy.

The City Council is moving toward a binding arbitration system for settling rent disputes at mobile home parks, despite tenant complaints that the plan offers them little relief and park owner fears that it may go too far.

The proposed ordinance would set up a mediation and arbitration process recommended by a committee of owners and tenants. But the council ordered changes in the proposal last week and sent it back to the city attorney for revision.

Councilman Tomas Ursua said the ordinance needs a rollback provision to cover huge rent increases imposed since mid-1990. He said some parks have doubled rents during that time.

Ursua said rents should be rolled back to July 1, 1990, a proposal that drew support from three of the other six council members.

But a subsequent proposal to make the ordinance retroactive only to July of last year was supported by six of the seven members, making it unclear which date will prevail when the ordinance is considered again at the council’s April 20 meeting.

Complicating matters, a temporary rent freeze enacted in December expires April 30. To avoid a gap between the moratorium and permanent regulations, the council on April 20 will need to adopt the ordinance as an urgent measure, requiring six votes in order for it to take effect immediately.

Michelle Brooks, representative of a state association of mobile home park owners, said she believes that most owners would accept a rollback to 1991, but not to 1990.

David Kracoff, assets manager for the owner of one of the city’s 19 parks, said that if the council returns rents to 1990 levels, the owners will withdraw their offer to subsidize the rents of needy tenants. The owners have offered to contribute $1 per month per mobile home space to a rent subsidy fund. About $20,000 a year would be collected.

After receiving numerous complaints of rent gouging, the City Council in January asked park owners and residents to form a committee to develop a rent stabilization system. The ordinance that emerged would give renters five days to appeal rent increases.

If a majority of renters in a park signed protests, a mediation process would begin. If mediation failed, the rent dispute would be submitted to a retired judge for binding arbitration.

The loser would pay the arbitration costs. Non-rent disputes, such as problems with park maintenance, would be subject to mediation but not arbitration.

The tenant members of the committee said they supported the proposed ordinance only because it was all park owners were willing to accept.

The tenants, Alan Cartnal, Mary Llewellyn and Lottie Rosenbloom, issued a statement calling the ordinance a “frail document” that “does not solve the rent-gouging problem.”

Other mobile home residents submitted a separate proposal to the council urging it to roll back rents to 1988 levels, act as a rent review commission and limit rent increases to 5% a year, or to half the increase in the consumer price index, whichever is less.

Under state law, city rent regulations cannot apply to tenants who have signed leases longer than a year. An estimated one-third of the city’s 3,000 mobile home residents have long-term leases. They would come under the city’s rent regulations when their leases expire.