Mobile Home Dwellers Pin Ownership Hopes on Study

Mobile home residents, who must rent the land on which their dwellings sit, could one day become their own landlords under a proposal being studied by city officials.

Manufactured housing is perhaps the most affordable form of home ownership available to low-income families, senior citizens and disabled residents on fixed incomes--particularly in this wealthy suburban enclave where the average home sells for more than $370,000.

With mobile home rent-control laws being aggressively challenged across the state, the level of insecurity among park residents is on the rise.

Consider, for instance, John and Karina Robinson.

The roof over their heads depends on one thing: a municipal rent-control ordinance for mobile homes that guarantees their ground lease payments won’t rise more than about $8 a year.

Without that law, the couple would surely have to move from their white aluminum-sided mobile home in the Twin Palms community off Thousand Oaks Boulevard, said John Robinson, 66. Mobile home spaces rent elsewhere in the state from $500 to $600 compared with about $300 in Twin Palms, he said.

The possibility that rent control could be abolished prevents residents from putting much money into their aging coaches and breeds mistrust between them and park owners, Robinson said. He believes owning the land beneath their coaches would solve those and other problems mobile home tenants face.

“Although we own our mobile home, we never get to own the piece of ground it’s parked on, and this does not make for a long-term sense of security,” said Robinson, a native of England who is on medical leave from his jobs at two local nonprofit groups.

“If rent control were deregulated, we would not be able to afford the space rental and that would be true for everyone in this park,” he said.

Such a concern is legitimate, said Henry Heater, an attorney with Endeman, Lincoln, Turek and Heater, a San Diego law firm that specializes in mobile home law.

Although he believes most standard rent-control laws are safe, a recent opinion from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found a portion of one city’s mobile home law to be unconstitutional, Heater said. Because that case will very likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, he said the eventual outcome could have serious ramifications for all rent-control laws.

Robert Coldren, an attorney with Santa Ana-based Hart, King & Coldren, which represents park owners in mobile home disputes, said conversion to tenant ownership is becoming increasingly common throughout the state. He said the industry as a whole supports the idea, provided an individual park owner wants to sell.

“It is one option that works well in some circumstances,” Coldren said.

Friction usually arises, however, surrounding the purchase price.

“I think what many park owners are resistant to is the notion that not only are their property values eroded due to rent control . . . and other regulatory acts by the city, but then they are asked to part with their mobile home park below fair market value,” Coldren said.

On Tuesday, the Thousand Oaks City Council approved a request by members Ed Masry and Linda Parks to authorize city staff members to study the conversion issue, saying it’s the city’s obligation to protect its already inadequate stock of affordable housing.

The report, expected within three months, will include an inventory of mobile home parks in the city, including names and addresses of park owners, options that exist to convert rental parks into resident-owned parks, and information on the availability of federal, state and other sources of funding that could help accomplish the conversions.

Thousand Oaks is one of dozens of municipalities looking at resident ownership of mobile home parks, said Chuck Sallia, vice president of the Golden State Mobile Home Owners League. The city is about 1,400 units short of its identified housing need for low- and very low-income residents, and with existing growth-control laws, available land to build on is tough to find.

“This is the only option I know of to ensure we keep the affordable housing,” Sallia said.

Thousand Oaks’ rent-control law has been in place since the mid-1980s. It limits rent hikes on the city’s 1,090 mobile home spaces to 75% of the Consumer Price Index’s annual increase, said Mark Asturias, the city’s housing and redevelopment manager.

He said part of the upcoming staff study will analyze the economics of tenant ownership. It’s unclear, for instance, whether the cost of overall park upkeep and operation along with mortgage payments would actually be cheaper for residents than renting the spaces. State and federal subsidies could help, but the exact numbers must be examined, Asturias said.

But Sallia said in resident-owned parks, the money that would normally contribute to the owner’s profit could help offset the cost of ownership for the residents.

And Robinson of Twin Palms said residents of his park would rather have control over their maintenance needs.

“If we couldn’t afford it at least we’d know it and could take actions to do the work that needed to be done,” he said.

There are half a dozen methods residents could use to purchase a park, if the owners of the property were willing to sell, Asturias said. The city could purchase the land with a low-interest loan and manage the park, or could sell it back to the residents. City officials could also help residents establish an association that would buy the park or just help them secure federal and state funding.

But, Asturias said, such funding is usually in the form of loans and competition for the money is fierce.

One program is run by the state housing department. Lorraine French, a loan officer in the Mobile Home Park Resident Ownership Program, said a handful of $1-million loans at 3% interest is doled out every year. The money comes mostly from a $5 fee paid by residents when they register their mobile homes with the state.

“In the old days, that used to go a long way. But it doesn’t go very far in parks these days,” she said. “We’re a very small program and we have a diminishing revenue stream.”

Asturias said he has not been approached by any owners of the city’s 11 mobile home parks, but at least one owner has made it clear she has no intention of letting go of her family’s park.

“We are not going to sell,” said Kathy Lee, who owns Elms Plaza in Newbury Park with her husband, Howard.

Heater, the San Diego attorney, said the rise in resident ownership in the past five years has been motivated by a decline in mobile home park construction and a sharp rise in the demand for entry-level housing.

“There’s this tension in terms of having the equity of your home at the mercy of a landlord,” Heater said. “There’s certainly an economic incentive to owning the space your home is on.”

Daphney Howard, 79, an 18-year resident of Elms Plaza, hopes something concrete comes of the city’s study.

“It’s time this city paid some attention to the run-of-the-mill people here,” she said. “We’re not asking for charity. We’ll pay our rent. I just want some protection.”