Posted by Ted Appel in Cities on May 18th, 2010 tags: mobile home park, Petaluma, rent control, settlement, Torliatt
By LORI A. CARTER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Petaluma has agreed to settle two lawsuits filed by mobile home park owners challenging arbitration rulings under the city’s mobile home rent control ordinance.
After a closed-session meeting Monday night, City Attorney Eric Danly announced that City Council members voted unanimously to settle both suits. They had been filed by the owner of Sandalwood Estates, a 178-space park on North McDowell Boulevard.
The owner had appealed arbitration rulings in two instances. In one case, the issue was still pending. The other had been decided in the city’s favor in Sonoma County Superior Court.
The settlement leaves intact the court ruling for the city and states that Sandalwood agrees not to appeal it, Danly said. The other matter will be dismissed.
“The end result of the settlement is that there is no longer any litigation involving the city’s rent control program,” he said.
No money changed hands in the settlement, he said.
The settlement doesn’t affect the city’s rent control ordinance, which cannot be amended by such an agreement.
Bill Donahue, a representative for mobile home park residents, said he is pleased with the settlement. Residents, many of them seniors on fixed incomes, have been fighting hefty rent increase attempts for the past decade.
An attorney for Sandalwood didn’t return messages left Tuesday. Park owner Bill Feeney of Newport Beach couldn’t be reached for comment.
The first case stemmed from a ruling in 2008, when an arbitrator agreed to rent increases of nearly $100 a month to several renters, Donahue said. The owners, who wanted increases of about $200, appealed in the form of a lawsuit against the city.
The city defended the lawsuit under its rent control provisions and a judge ruled against park owners, saying they didn’t have a right to increases of that amount.
The second case came out of requests to increase the rent of some tenants as much as $400 a month, Donahue said.
He said residents challenged owners’ accounting practices in which they claimed they were allowed to seek about $4 million in returns on their investment, some through rent hikes.
“They have basically now thrown their hands in the air and are giving up on both suits and agreed not to take it any further in the court system,” Donahue said.
Mayor Pam Torliatt said this settlement clears the deck of any ongoing legal challenges to the city’s rent control ordinance.
“The city is hopeful that this will be the last of the litigation brought by the mobile home park owners against the residents,” she said.
AROUND CALIFORNIA - NEWS FOR OWNERS OF MOBILE/MANUFACTURED HOMES 