Rent Is Due for City Vote

Voters in Huntington Beach will be asked next year to ban rent control at mobile home parks, apartments and single-family homes. The only catch: There is no rent control in Huntington Beach.

The measure is a preemptive strike against a possible move for rent control within the city’s 18 mobile home parks.

Mobile-home park residents have complained in recent years about rising rents in the coastal community. A year ago, they asked Huntington Beach to consider passing a measure that would tie rent increases at the parks to the Consumer Price Index.

At that time, the City Council, which has taken no position on the issue, agreed to study the rent increase limits at the parks.

The specter of rent control energized a group of mobile home park owners, apartment owners and other property rights groups to form Property Owners for Property Rights. Longtime Huntington Beach businessman Ed Laird, a former planning commissioner, is promoting the ban. The initiative was placed on the March 2002 ballot earlier this month by the City Council after organizers gathered more than enough voter signatures.

“The city of Huntington Beach shouldn’t be telling property owners what they can charge for rent,” said Washington-based consultant Frank Caterinicchio, representing Property Owners for Property Rights, which has raised about $100,000 to date for next year’s campaign.

Huntington Beach has about 3,200 mobile home spaces--the third highest in Orange County after Anaheim, which has about 4,300 spaces, and Santa Ana, which has about 3,800 spaces.

Mobile-home park renters argue that they are more vulnerable to rate increases than other residents because, though they rent space at parks, they own their homes, which cannot easily be moved.

If a homeowner falls behind in rent and is forced to leave, the park owner can place a lien on the home, effectively stopping it from being moved, said Steve Gullage, president of the Golden State Manufactured Home Owners League, a statewide organization based in Garden Grove:

“Rents are naturally going out of sight everywhere,” said Gullage, who lives in a Huntington Beach mobile-home park where rents are about $500 a month. But he said some rents for spaces at city parks are approaching $900 a month--out of reach of many seniors on fixed incomes.

“We’ve got a lot of people who are scared,” he said.

Only one city in Orange County--San Juan Capistrano--currently controls rents at its mobile home parks. That measure was passed by the City Council in 1979. Voters in Laguna Beach and Anaheim rejected rent-control measures in 1991.

Elsewhere in California, rent-control laws exist in Los Angeles for housing units built before Oct. 1, 1978. Several cities have rent-stabilization ordinances that restrict the amount of increases that can be charged.

In 1996, an attempt to persuade voters to pass a statewide ban on rent-control measures for mobile homes, homes and apartments failed. However, long-standing rent-control laws in Berkeley and Santa Monica were overturned by local voters in 1999.

Gullage said he is worried that passage of the Huntington Beach initiative could lead to moves in other cities to ban rent control before it can be adopted.

“This is a steppingstone,” he said. “They tried to do it statewide and were defeated. Now they’re trying to go city to city. In my opinion, it would destroy the affordable housing programs in some cities.”

Caterinicchio said his group wants to stop rent control in Huntington Beach from passing and being adopted--and expanded--in other cities.

“If you have it occurring in one city, it tends to be like a virus, spreading to other cities,” he said. “This is about preserving everyone’s ability to lease their property for what the market will bear.”

The Center for Demographic Research at Cal State Fullerton, which is conducting the rent control study for the City Council, will report its findings next month. The review will include a look at rents charged elsewhere among Orange County’s 200-plus parks.

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CONTROLLING RENTS

Huntington Beach is studying the need for rent control at mobile home parks. A measure headed for the March 2002 ballot would bar rent-control measures at mobile home parks, single-family homes and apartments. Below are rental rates at eight of the city’s 17 parks. Though most rents haven’t risen dramatically, advocacy groups say increases have a greater effect on seniors on fixed incomes.

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Park 2000 2001 Change Brookfield Manor 465.00 500.00 7.5 Del Mar Mobile Estates 450.00 450.00 0 Huntington Mobile Estates 550.00 570.00 3.6 Huntington Shorecliffs 452.00 536.00 18.5 Los Amigos 480.68 497.98 3.6 Mariners Pointe 507.00 517.00 2.0 Rancho Del Rey 524.00 537.00 2.5 Sea Breeze Mobile Estates 440.00 440.00 0

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Source: Huntington Beach Mobilehome Owners Assn.