LAKE FOREST : Council to Discuss Mobile Home Study

Once again, the City Council is expected to hear from mobile home owners who are pushing to get a rent control law passed.

Tonight the council will discuss a just-released staff report on the mobile home park issue. The report lists several options to resolve a dispute between owners of the city’s four mobile home parks and their predominantly elderly tenants over rent increases.

Options in the staff report include:

* Providing rental assistance through county or federal programs or city resources.

* Establishing a rent mediation board.

* Converting the mobile home parks to tenant ownership.

* Having the city use its eminent domain powers--the ability to take over land for the public good--to become the landlord of the four mobile home parks.

* Imposing a form of rent control to regulate how much landlords would be permitted to raise space fees.

Since September, residents of the four mobile home parks have pressed for an ordinance limiting the amount of rent increase a tenant can be charged.

There are 1,238 mobile home spaces in Lake Forest, the staff report indicated. Senior citizens live in all but about 80 of the occupied spaces in the city.

However, the council has so far been reluctant to pass rent control, instead asking the staff to issue a report on the mobile home park situation.

Councilwoman Helen Wilson said she doesn’t see Lake Forest “doing a rent control ordinance, but I certainly think staff has given us a whole list of options.”

Wilson said she favors establishing a rent mediation board. “It would really define rules for when there are grievances and when there are concerns,” she said.