City to Help Some Seniors With Rent

Bill Funk thinks the city has come up with a pretty good way to help seniors living in mobile home parks cope with the rising cost of rent.

Simi Valley’s Affordable Housing Subcommittee will subsidize 75% of any increase in monthly rent for seniors who spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

“Obviously it would help the pocketbook,” said Funk, 81, who lives with his wife in Susana Woods Prestige Mobile Estates. “You have a fixed income that only goes so far.”

Funk, who pays $354 a month for one of the 170 spaces at the park plus $110 for utilities, said his rent went up $10 a month in April, which means the city would give him $7.50 a month.

The plan to help seniors is not a panacea, but it’s a start, said Dulce Conde-Sierra, the city’s deputy director of housing.

Money for the subsidies will be drawn from taxes collected for the city’s redevelopment fund, she said.

Mayor Bill Davis, who chairs the Affordable Housing Subcommittee, said the plan is a good way of helping seniors pay rent hikes. He said it will also benefit mobile home park owners who need to raise rent to help pay for maintenance and landscaping.

“It helps both sides in that seniors are not going to scream bloody murder every time the guy wants to raise rent $5,” Davis said.