LAKE FOREST : Rent Moratorium Expected to Be OKd

A divided City Council is expected to narrowly approve a rent moratorium for the city’s mobile home parks on Tuesday.

The rent freeze failed to pick up the four-fifths vote it needed to be enacted as an emergency measure last week.

But during the crowded, sometimes raucous special meeting, the moratorium received support from three council members--just enough for the proposed ordinance to pass at Tuesday’s regular council session.

Opponents of a freeze pointed out that about two-thirds of the approximately 1,200 mobile home park tenants hold long-term leases and won’t be affected by the moratorium.

However, a council majority consisting of Mayor Ann Van Haun and council members Marcia Rudolph and Tim Link said the freeze could bring a new resolve to negotiations between landlords and tenants, despite a year of stalemate discussion on rent rollbacks and rent.

“Even if only a small percentage are benefited by (a rent moratorium), it is worth doing if it gives us the freedom” to continue meaningful negotiations, said Van Haun.

With the audience spilling over into two back rooms, the special council meeting ran over four hours and was filled with accusatory, often contradictory claims by both groups.

The city’s four mobile home parks are predominantly occupied by senior citizens. Many elderly residents live near poverty and have been devastated by rent increases in recent years that have seen monthly space fees increase an average of $140 to $600, the tenants claim.

Landlords and their attorneys presented the council with a stack of paperwork, which they said showed that mobile park rents have not increased more than the cost of living. “There is no such thing as outrageous or extraordinary rent increases in Lake Forest,” said Larry Weaver, an attorney representing Kimberly Gardens Mobile Homes.

Ernie Rettino, a resident of El Toro Mobile Home Estates and a leader of the tenants, said the group stands by its figures.

“We have proved what the rents are. . . . Every time we made a statement, we backed it up with charts and receipts,” he said.

Although some progress has been made in the yearlong talks between the two sides, discussion has been at a stalemate on rent rollbacks and rent increases.

On Tuesday, the council approved a standard mobile home lease that includes points agreed to by both sides--except for rent rollbacks and rent increases.