Mobile Home Issue Kept Off Ballot
The County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday refused to place a mobile home rent control measure before voters this fall, prompting vows from angry leaders of a tenants’ organization to put the initiative onto the ballot themselves.
The proposal, which would have covered unincorporated areas of the county, died when no board member would support Supervisor John MacDonald’s attempt to place it on the Nov. 3 ballot. Instead, the board referred the issue of escalating mobile home rents to a county task force for other solutions.
“I frankly think government has its nose in too many people’s business right now,” said Supervisor George Bailey. “And this is another of those cases.”
But MacDonald, who brought the measure before the supervisors on behalf of the mostly elderly tenants of the County Mobilehome Positive Action Committee, said there are “thousands of people out there who are being harassed, who are being cajoled, who are being mentally tortured” by mobile home park owners threatening eviction.
The measure would have rolled back mobile home space rental rates to 1989 levels and capped annual rent increases at 65% of the increase in the annual consumer price index. A panel would have been created to rule on requests for rent increases. It also would have determined whether rents and owners’ return on investment were fair.
The supervisors’ decision followed an hourlong hearing in a packed board chamber at which rent control advocates said mobile home park owners are motivated by the huge profits they are able to reap in a market they monopolize.
Because there are few vacancies at the county’s 487 mobile home parks and because of the high cost of dismantling and moving a home, tenants “are being held captive or hostage in their own homes,” said Gerald Lenhardt, the group’s executive director.
“The ordinance will stop the economic raping and pillaging and plundering that is going on even as we speak,” he said.
Opponents of the measure said it would add a costly layer of bureaucracy, reduce the value of the parks and the property taxes owners pay, and send out another “anti-business” signal from the county government.
George Smith, a board member of the mobile home park tenants group, vowed to place the measure before voters through a volunteer signature drive--a huge task given the size of the county. With too little time to meet the Aug. 7 deadline for this fall’s ballot, the group would have to collect 67,253 signatures to get the initiative onto the June, 1994, ballot, the next regularly scheduled, county-wide election, said Judy Nelson, a spokeswoman for the county registrar of voters.
The organization could force a special election by collecting twice that many signatures, Nelson said.
Neither side had specifics on average rents or rent increases paid by the county’s approximately 87,000 mobile home residents. A tenants’ group official suggested that monthly rents for tenants, many of whom are on fixed incomes, range from $250 to $550, and that some have suddenly faced increases up to $175 a month.
John Baldwin, vice president of the San Diego chapter of the Western Mobilehome Assn. and a partner in 10 parks, said rents can range from $245 to $800 a month, but offered no specifics on typical rent increases.
The cities of Oceanside, San Marcos and Escondido have enacted mobile home park rent controls. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Escondido’s regulations, ruling that local rent control laws apply even when mobile home tenants sell their spaces to new buyers.
