Mobile Home Rent Controls

* “Voters to Decide Fate of Rent Control in Mobile Home Parks” (March 12) was an informative and fairly well-balanced article. I thought that your readers would be interested in knowing more about just how badly the “rent control promise” has failed.

Rent control is a failed public policy that has cost California taxpayers millions of dollars while giving a one-time windfall profit to a small group of mobile home owners who live in a park at the time rent control is adopted. According to a study by the Real Estate Consulting Group, rent control increases the resale price of a mobile home by as much as $40,000. The study reported that the same mobile home will sell for $40,000 less in a nonrent-controlled park charging market rents.

Mobile home rent control hurts future mobile home buyers by increasing housing costs while costing taxpayers millions of dollars to administer.

VICKIE TALLEY

Executive Director

Manufactured Housing

Educational Trust

Orange

* Mobile home park operators claim that a marketplace free of government control would stimulate development of affordable housing. Rent control would have no impact on the development of new parks because state law prohibits rent control on parks constructed after 1989. Possibly the park operators mean that if there were no rent control they would be able to increase their profits and be able to build more parks at the expense of present mobile home owners?

Thank you for the article, as I believe all voters need to be better informed and to be encouraged to vote no matter what candidate they are for or what issues they are for or against.

HERBERT W. FANTA

Brea