Mobile Home Rent Debate to Continue

A crowd is expected at tonight’s City Council meeting as the long-running debate over rent control for mobile home parks continues.

The council is expected to consider hiring a consultant to study whether it may legally impose rent control in the city’s 10 mobile home parks.

The fact that the City Council is even contemplating that hiring has outraged park owners.

“We are terribly frustrated,” said Vickie Talley, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Educational Trust. “There is no excuse for this going on.”

The complaints over high rent and poor conditions at the mobile home parks are private ones, said Talley, and should be worked out between the owners and their tenants.

But tenants at Katella Mobile Home Estates, the most vocal of Stanton’s mobile home park residents, said they also are frustrated. They have met with council members and park owners and picketed City Hall to no avail.

After three years of arguing in favor of what she calls “rent fairness,” Ginger Jordan, a resident of the Katella park, announced last week that she will run for City Council in an effort to push for rent control from inside City Hall.

“They have done nothing to save the homes of the people in the city of Stanton,” Jordan said. “I believe in fighting for the people who live in mobile homes against the greedy park owners.”

Talley said that if the council hires a consultant, it will signal an important shift in its attitude. For years, the council as a whole was philosophically opposed rent control.