City Cites Cost in Voting Down Mobile Home Rent Study

Citing financial constraints as well as an aversion to interfering in private business, the City Council this week voted against hiring a consultant to study the impact of imposing rent control at mobile home parks.

Councilman Sal Sapien, previously a rent control opponent, changed his stand on the issue this year. Sapien put the issue before the council, he said, because after three years of fielding complaints about rent hikes amid deteriorating conditions at Katella Mobile Home Estates, he said residents are being “gouged.”

“We need to protect our citizens not only from criminals with guns and knives but also from criminals with pens and paper,” he said, referring to park owners.

Mayor William C. Estrada was the only other council member who voted in favor of funding the study, which would have cost the city from $12,000 to $15,000.

The proposal was to study whether there was sufficient evidence that tenants at mobile home parks were being charged unfair rents. The findings, had they uncovered strikingly high rents, might have been used to pass a rent control ordinance.

Residents of the Katella Mobile Home Estates, who have argued in favor of rent control for years because they claim their rents are unusually high, said they were bitterly disappointed.

“Nobody cares,” Ginger Jordan said after the meeting. “They might as well have waved goodbye to all of us.”