Pomona OKs Mobile Home Rent Rollback : Housing: Ordinance will set rates at 1990 levels and use binding arbitration to settle disputes. Council will meet again Tuesday to formally adopt the statute.

Over objections from landlords, the City Council has given preliminary approval to an ordinance that rolls back rents in Pomona mobile home parks to 1990 levels and uses binding arbitration to settle rent disputes.

The council endorsed the plan on a 4-3 vote Monday night. The lawmakers will meet Tuesday at 6 p.m. to formally adopt the ordinance in time for it to become effective for June rents.

“Basically, it’s disappointing,” said Michelle Brooks of the Western Mobilehome Assn., which represents park owners. The owners were willing to submit future rent increases to binding arbitration, she said, but not with a two-year rollback.

For renters such as Alan Cartnal, who spearheaded resistance to rent increases, the plan is a boon. He said his $440-a-month rent will revert to $233.

“It’s a major victory for people like me,” he said.

Under state law the regulations will apply immediately only to tenants who rent on a month-to-month basis. Brooks estimates that one-third of the city’s 1,639 mobile home spaces involve such arrangements.

Tenants with leases of a year or more would gain the benefits of rent regulation when their leases, which typically run five years, expire.

Under the plan approved Monday on its first reading, park owners would have to notify mobile home owners of rent increases 60 days in advance. A mediation process would begin if more than half of the renters petition for it within five days. Mediation would be followed by binding arbitration if no accord is reached. The losing side would pay the costs of the arbitration process.

Brooks said that rolling back rents means that every increase imposed since June, 1990, would be subject to review.

“It’s going to hurt the park owners who have never had a problem,” she said. “It invites trouble.”

A survey submitted to the City Council in January showed that the rent for the average mobile home space in Pomona had risen 35% in four years to $275 a month. But rates rose by 162% in one park and 67% in another during that period.

David Kracoff, asset manager for the owner of the Westland Estates mobile home park, which has imposed the highest rate increases in the city, said the rollback is unfair. Many park owners will cut costs by skimping on maintenance because of the loss of rent revenue, he predicted.

Kracoff and Brooks said park owners will withdraw their offer to contribute $1 per month per mobile home space to a rent subsidy fund for needy tenants.

The park owners had hailed this voluntary plan as the best way to help tenants strapped for rent money. But some tenants dismissed it as an inadequate response that would help very few.

Mayor Donna Smith and Councilmen Boyd Bredenkamp and Ken West voted against the rent control plan because of the rollback provision. West said the city has encouraged residents and park owners to negotiate leases, but the rollback only helps those without leases.

“The key question is fairness,” Councilman Tomas Ursua said.

By rolling back rents to July 1, 1990, he said, the city will set up a process under which an arbitrator can determine if tenants have been victims of rent-gouging, as many claim.

Councilwoman Paula Lantz noted that the ordinance specifies that the system will be in effect, initially, for three years.

“I don’t think anyone is convinced that this is going to solve everybody’s problem,” she said. “If it doesn’t work, it will be reworked.”