Mobile Home Rent Controls Win City OK

New rules to control mobile home rents won approval Monday night from the City Council, resolving an issue that has pitted landlord against tenant for years.

The council voted 6 to 0 to approve a list of revisions to the city’s current rent-stabilization ordinance, with Mayor Jack Tingstrom abstaining because he owns a mobile home. The changes will come back before the council next week for a final reading.

Rent stabilization has been a pressing issue for the city’s 3,000 mobile home park residents, who have complained of unfair rent hikes in the city’s 10 mobile home parks for more than a decade.

But this year is particularly important for them since a statewide ballot initiative would make it harder for cities to amend existing rent-control ordinances.

Recognizing the tight timeline, council members stressed the need to approve a final ordinance before the March 26 election.

“It would be a travesty if we ended up missing the time frame and ended up without an ordinance,” Councilman Jim Friedman said before the meeting.

Park owners and mobile home owners, who have been at odds over rent-control regulations, agreed that the city needs to act swiftly to approve any changes before the March election.

And they expressed exasperation over the issue, which has hung over City Hall for months.

“We do not want any delay in this process,” said Richard Schmittou, representing the Mobilehome Owners Coordinating Council.

“I am encouraged that we seem to be reaching compromise and closure,” said Bill Schweinfurth, representing the owners of Lemonwood Mobile Home Park in Ventura.

Before Monday’s meeting, Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures praised city officials for drafting a complicated list of revisions that favored no particular side, she said.

“This is as close to down the middle as you get,” Measures said. “It appears we have come much closer in resolving the differences between the owners and the residents.”

The proposed changes come six months after council members adopted the rent-control ordinance, which limits the amount of money park owners can charge for their spaces. The amendments would:

* Allow park owners to charge mobile home owners interest costs on capital improvements.

* Allow the city to charge an administration fee of $2.27 per mobile home space to be split between park owners and mobile home owners.

* Prohibit park owners from seeking leases longer than 12 months.

* Extend the notification period from 60 to 90 days that park owners must give tenants before raising the rent.

On Jan. 8, the council considered those revisions, but postponed a decision after council members Steve Bennett and Ray Di Guilio each offered their own recommendations on the setting of interest rates and other technical points.

As a result of those suggestions, city officials drafted six more revisions that call for, among other things, allowing the city’s rent-review board to set interest rates used for capital improvements and allowing mobile home owners the right to approve improvements that would cost more than $10,000.

City leaders continued to tweak the ordinance’s wording Monday night, specifically changing the way interest rates will be set.

The council also directed city staff to draft a formula for automatic rent increases that would allow for a rent hike as large as the increase in the Consumer Price Index with a maximum of 5%.