Residents of a Vallejo mobile home park are fuming in the wake of an announcement this week that the owner plans to convert the ownership structure, potentially raising rent and adding dues for tenants.
The move could have ripple effects on other local mobile home parks, officials said.
The Vallejo Mobile Estates owner’s attorney said the conversion from a rental mobile home park to one of resident ownership could benefit all sides. Continue reading
History & Preface:
The L.A. Task Force publishes a GUIDE regarding the rent stabilization ordinance here in Los Angeles. The Rent Adjustment Commission oversees the Task Force. RAC has requested that Task Force Members make recommendations to update the Guide. The following email was sent to RAC on November 30, 2007. If you would like a copy of the guide, it is available online at
http://www.lacity.org/LAHD/mobilehm.pdf
E-mail from Frank Wodley, MHPTF member:
I do not feel the underlined sections below represent the way the task force is run. There is no full discussion of issues. Many mobilehome owner participants are not subject matter experts, but are simply owners of mobilehomes. The RAC does not ask information of potential task force members concerning issues in mobilehome parks; therefore has NO KNOWLEDGE of their qualifications.
The Mobile Home Park Task Force (MHPTF) is an advisory group established by the Rent Adjustment Commission (RAC) in order to provide a forum which allows full discussion of issues in mobilehome parks. The members of the Mobile Home Park Task Force are mobilehome owners, mobilehome park owners, and industry representatives who meet to discuss and resolve issues and provide advice and recommendations to the Rent Adjustment Commission (RAC). The members of the Task Force are volunteers who serve as subject matter experts in an advisory capacity to the Rent Adjustment Commission. Their role is to provide feedback to the RAC for changes in policies or procedures. The Task Force is also a place where members of the Task Force can discuss issues and provide referrals to appropriate agencies which can assist with problem resolution. Task Force members are not City staff. Issues to be referred to the Task Force or to the Rent Adjustment Commission should be forwarded through the Rent Adjustment Commission support staff, which coordinates the meetings and activities of the Task Force. The Task Force meetings are held to provide an open exchange of information between Task Force members and representatives of the City.
Other items, such as commonly asked questions I believe these refer to apartment buildings and less to mobilehome parks. Although this might be what the RSO in Los Angeles states, I feel the seven reasons in the MRL (798.56) are the ones that should apply. Relocation Assistance: This again appears to really apply to apartment residents, and not to mobilehome owners. Is there no conversion ordinance in the City of Los Angeles? Mobilehome owners can contact CoMO-CAL locally at 1-800-929-6061 to obtain a complimentary copy of the current Mobilehome Residency Law. Pilot Program: Issues brought by owners of mobilehomes should be referred to CoMO-CAL, an advocacy group for mobilehome owners. CMRAA has no representatives in L.A. County and GSMOL’s focus is on new legislation in Sacramento. This is what we do – help owners with issues. And we are local. They can contact us through email at comocal@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or calling 818-886-6479. At the very least, we should be notified when there is an issue.
Submitted this November 30, 2007 by
Frank A. Wodley LAMHPTF Member & CoMO-CAL President
P.S. Let me further state this task force, in my opinion, does little to help the owners of mobilehomes covered by the Los Angeles RSO. The mobilehome owner participants DO NOT represent anyone in the City (except myself and perhaps Valerie Montoya of GSMOL). And I believe I am the only one who does anything to disseminate information from task force meetings to mobilehome owners. I have and will continue to write about task force meetings in our monthly newsletter.
The make up of the task force is really a joke. The WMA representatives and park owner are professionals – this is their business, they are well versed on the laws and really are subject matter experts. On the other hand, this task force does not allow representatives of mobilehome owners – as attorneys that might represent us. Why not? At least then their participation would level the playing field. The current participants do not, in most cases, have any expertise in these issues.
I’ve made my thoughts known also about ‘no minutes or no recordings’ in meetings. I’ve also asked that task force members be appraised what is presented to the RAC. This hasn’t happened.
This task force could be making a difference in the lives of mobilehome owners. It could be used to discuss real issues in mobilehome parks. Of course these are not issues with the RSO, but what better forum.
Published in THE VOICE November 2007 Page 3:
Are you prepared to walk away from your mobilehome? Or perhaps sell it for much less than it is worth? Or do you feel I’m making this up to scare you into action? Well it is no joke and the signs are everywhere. Just read about the veto of AB1542, or the “new” Proposition 90, or AB1309. Continue reading
On my recent “road trip” to Northern California, I visited CoMO-CAL members who live in Santa Cruz area MH parks. “Rent control” was one of the topics we discussed at length. If you recall, ELS (Equity Life Styles), Mr. Sam Zell’s group, was asking residents in De Anza Mobile Estates to pay a $5,000 rent increase. As a consequence, many of you have heard that mobilehome rent control was “defeated in Santa Cruz” in 2003. But the parks I visited in the Santa Cruz area last week still have rent control. So, what’s going on here? Continue reading
HUNTINGTON BEACH – Mobile home park residents are urging the city to return to court to fight a lawsuit that challenges a city law they say protects them when owners want to close a park.
“We’re waiting in absolute fear for the ordinance to be altered or repealed with the almost certainty of parks being converted once the ordinance is removed,” said Steve Gullage, president of the Huntington Beach Mobile Home Association. Continue reading
It took a couple of tries, but in the end the state Senate approved a bill Tuesday to preserve rent control when a mobile home park is subdivided.
The topic is a major issue to mobile home dwellers in Carson, where landowner James Goldstein is attempting to convert two parks to resident-ownership.
City officials have vowed to fight to protect rent control at both parks, but as the law currently stands, cities have little say in the matter.
Residents of both parks, Colony Cove Mobile Estates and Carson Harbor Village, fear that their rents will rise dramatically if they opt not to buy their spaces.
The bill, AB 1542 by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, would allay those fears by extending local rent control to moderate-income residents. State law already protects low-income residents.
The bill passed the Senate 21-16 on Tuesday afternoon, winning the bare minimum needed for approval. On Friday, the bill had failed with only 19 votes. It has previously passed the Assembly.
“It’s good news,” said Carson City Attorney Bill Wynder. “We’ve now got to persuade the governor to sign the bill.”
Evans, D-Santa Rosa, wrote the legislation after experiencing frustration with the issue in her hometown.
She said Tuesday that two senators, Ron Calderon and Dean Florez, were persuaded to change their minds after Friday’s tally, giving the bill enough votes to pass.
“Local folks explained to them how important it is for their own constituents to preserve low- and moderate-income housing,” Evans said. “It’s a great bill, and it’s a real victory for seniors and working families.”
The bill was opposed by the California Association of Realtors and the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association. Sheila Dey, the executive director of WMA, said the legislation would impede condo-conversions and make it harder for low-income renters to own their mobile home spaces.
“It absolutely makes no sense to me why the government would not want people to own their own homes and property,” Dey said. “Having residents be able to own their own property in expensive areas of Southern California is a good thing for residents and not a bad thing.”
Dey said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and union leaders had gotten involved in twisting arms to make sure the bill would pass.
“We worked as hard as we could,” she said. “We already killed it once, but they don’t let anything die over there.”
“They never thought we would get this through,” Evans said.
Wynder said that the city’s lobbyist tried to persuade hesitant lawmakers that the issue is not as simple as it first appeared.
“I think there was a feeling this was somehow an attack on property rights,” Wynder said. “When we had a chance to sit down and explain that there are two kinds of property rights here – the guy who owns the (park) and the guy who owns the mobile home coach – that put it in a whole different perspective.”
Bill Smalley, a resident who chairs a committee to fight the conversion at Colony Cove, said he was pleased that the bill had passed. Residents there pay $400 per month in space rent, thanks to Carson’s strict rent control law. Some feared their rent could float to as high as $1,000 per month once the conversion goes through and rent control is eliminated.
“It’s a fantastic thing,” Smalley said. “It would protect us at Colony Cove, but it’s too late for Carson Harbor Village.”
Indeed, the bill will have no bearing on the situation at Carson Harbor Village. Last week, the Carson City Council rejected Goldstein’s proposal to convert the park. Goldstein is certain to sue to overturn the denial, and legal precedent is on his side. He has previously waged a similar battle in Palm Springs and won.
While steeling themselves for that legal fight, Carson officials are also preparing to lobby Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the Evans legislation.
“We haven’t heard any preconceived notion out of the Governor’s Office that he’s for or against the bill,” Wynder said. “That indicates he’s willing to listen.”
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A contentious public meeting at the Napa County Fairgrounds in Calistoga last week revealed that mobile home park residents and owners are still far from reaching an accord on rent stabilization in Calistoga.
Seniors who live in mobile home parks are concerned that changes in rent control and related laws will reduce the affordability of mobile home living and perhaps force them out of their homes. Owners are saying restrictive rent control measures are ruining their ability to operate the parks efficiently or profitably. Continue reading
ANTIOCH — City leaders this week extended an urgency ordinance prohibiting the conversion of senior mobile home parks in Antioch to parks for families of all ages.
The move comes after talks between city officials and the owners of Vista Diablo Mobile Home Park failed to reach an adequate compromise on how the park should be run. Park management has sought to raise rents and open the park to people of all ages, not just those 55 and older.
The City Council also directed staff to look into a mobile home rent control ordinance and research a possible zoning ordinance to protect senior housing. Such measures could possibly violate federal housing discrimination laws.
“I am fully aware that lawsuits are going to happen,” Mayor Donald Freitas said. “I tell my staff to always pick your battles. I’m willing to pick this as one of my battles, because — quite frankly — this is elder abuse.”
The issue first came before the council late last year when residents of Vista Diablo complained the park’s management company, Anaheim-based Sierra Corporate Management, wanted to raise rents for new residents to $1,100.
Abe Arrigotti, president of Sierra Corporate Management, did not attend Tuesday night’s meeting.
Vista Diablo tenants in their 70s and 80s who are on fixed incomes have signed 20-plus-year leases with annual rent increases of 6 percent, residents and officials said.
“The more I learn about what these individuals do, the more concerned I am,” Freitas said.
“It’s unconscionable — absolutely unconscionable. For them, it’s about money; to me, it’s all about greed.”
Mobile home parks have played a vital role in Antioch, providing affordable housing for senior citizens, according to a city staff report. There are three mobile home parks in the city, two of which are designated for seniors only.
Vista Diablo residents attended Tuesday night’s meeting but were not as vocal as they have been in the past.
“There’s not much else that can be said,” said Archie Gore, vice president of the park’s homeowners association. “I don’t think we have a lot of options left — I just hope we’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I still believe the only permanent resolution lies in strict legislation at the state level.”
The city believed it had reached an agreement with Sierra Corporate Management in January, officials said. The owners of Vista Diablo, however, delayed memorializing the agreement and raised last-minute objections, prompting the city to pass its urgency ordinance.
The extended ordinance will be in effect for the next 10 months and 15 days.
Simon Read covers Antioch. Reach him at 925-779-7166, or sread@….
The City of Goleta stood fast against an attempted end-run around its mobile home rent control ordinances?—?namely Daniel Guggenheim’s bid to subdivide his Rancho Mobile Home Park and sell its 150 parcels for about $250,000 each. It is a strategy that has been used successfully by park owners throughout California, led by activist Sam Zell. Several park residents said they were pleasantly surprised to see their City Council circle the wagons around a Goleta city staff report that could spell doom for the proposed condo conversion.
Those attending the June 4 hearing were not sure if the more business-oriented council majority elected last year would defend the parks as staunchly as did Goleta’s previous council, which successfully fought Guggenheim’s attempt to vanquish the city’s rent control ordinance in the courts. Two of those new councilmembers, Eric Onnen and Michael Bennett, received considerable campaign contributions from Guggenheim before the election.
Despite threats of another lawsuit, though, the council seconded planning staff’s insistence that Guggenheim’s subdivision tract map requires an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Clarke Fairbrother( pictured above, center, with two other company employees )—president of Newport Pacific Capital Company, Inc., which manages the Rancho Mobile Homes property on behalf of Guggenheim—told the City Council that an EIR is uncalled for because Guggenheim is proposing no physical changes to the park and that the city’s approval is therefore a simple ministerial process. An attorney for Guggenheim, Thomas Casparian, threatened to sue for “millions of dollars” if the council directed staff to proceed with an EIR. None of the two dozen other municipalities where his firm’s clients have proposed such subdivisions has required an EIR, he said, and an EIR is no place for the city to vet “social and economic issues” such as the loss of affordable housing. He called the city staff’s position “extremely novel.”
State law calls for environmental review because the project might displace affordable housing, said Goleta Planning Director Steve Chase. That would necessitate the construction of replacement housing elsewhere, said Chase, and that is an environmental effect. In addition, he said, approval of Guggenheim’s tract map would likely set a precedent so that in addition to the 150 households at the Rancho Mobile Home Park, those at Goleta’s three other rent-controlled parks would be affected.
Fairbrother claimed that there would “be no displacement.” Park residents would be offered “binding lease contracts” to stay at their current rent-controlled rates plus annual cost-of-living increases. However, for those who are willing, he said, his client is prepared to offer his tenants a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to buy the parcels under their mobile homes. Fairbrother enumerated the government subsidies that can be used to assist low-income buyers, including loans that require no payments until the land is sold.
In that case, asked Onnen, “Why avoid the EIR?” Responding to implications that the city was using the EIR simply to stall and obstruct, Onnen said, “I can assure you the [EIR] was never about derailing the process. I can assure that that was never part of the discussion in closed session.”
Bennett asked how Guggenheim could be trusted to allow people to stay in their homes at current rents, since Guggenheim will make the profits he seeks only if people purchase. “To say he’ll look after everybody seems a little disingenuous,” said Bennett. “We don’t know how many can be financed through government subsidies for low-income,” Fairbrother admitted, “but we can’t go forward without the tract map.”
Noting that there is “no hard evidence that tenants would not be displaced,” Goleta planner Patricia Miller said that the EIR would create a process for “mulling, examining, weighing, and coming up with replacement alternatives if needed.”
The City Council, with Roger Aceves absent, voted 4-1 to proceed with the EIR.
When Ramona Birch first settled in what is now Hermosa Beach’s Marineland Mobile Home Park, residents there lived in tents and buses scattered on a dirt lot full of eucalyptus trees.
Tenants paid $25 a month for a spot in 1957, and the park was more like a gypsy camp, the 78-year-old said.
“It wasn’t really a park,” Birch said. “It looked like a camping ground.”
Fifty years later, residents pay more than $1,000 a month in rent, some live in two-story coaches and the park’s homeowners association enjoys considerable clout in the city.
And even more is set to change in the coming months.
After enduring a string of owners through the years, residents are rallying together to purchase the property for an estimated $8million, a move that would turn many of them into first-time landowners – of beach-side property no less.
Janice Yates, president of the homeowners association, has lived in the park for 10 years. She owns her home, but not the land it sits on – the classic “mobile home conundrum,” she called it.
“We’re going to own our land,” Yates said. “If we can put (our rent) into our property, it’s the American dream. And it will increase in value.”
State law allows mobile home park residents to subdivide the land and sell off the parcels, so long as the group has an OK from the landowner.
The 2004 sales agreement with park owner Millennium Housing gave Marineland residents a 10-year window to purchase the land for $8 million.
Yates figures that about 85 percent of residents are on board, but Birch and her 83-year-old husband aren’t among them.
“We’re getting at that age where we won’t be here too much longer to enjoy it,” Birch said.
After calling the tiny spot tucked away near Pier Avenue and Bard Street home for five decades, Birch isn’t eager to leave Marineland.
Her children attended Hermosa schools, and she has held a weekly coffee get-together with her neighbors for nearly 50 years.
She and husband Earl never had the drive to own a home, she said, and they’ve spent much of their nearly 60-year marriage living in mobile homes.
So the couple will either find a way to continue renting their space or they’ll move, Birch said.
But state law protects people like the Birches, so the sale will not put the couple on the street or subject them to skyrocketing rents, said Jon Rodrigue, an attorney assisting in the purchase.
The sale will likely be done in two parts, Rodrigue said.
The first stage – set to wrap by the end of the year – would help residents form a cooperative to purchase the property as a whole, he said.
A second, more complicated step would subdivide the property – about 50 mobile home owners occupy 60 spaces – and provide each resident a deed to his or her land, Rodrigue said.
The group has until June 15 to apply for about $2 million in assistance from a state program that helps mobile home park residents purchase the land where they live, Yates added.
The relative tranquility surrounding Marineland’s proposed sale is in stark contrast to the atmosphere of other South Bay mobile home parks pursuing condominium conversion.
The owner of two Carson parks envisions conversion as a way to increase profits and battle rent control, drawing the ire of Colony Cove Mobile Estates and Carson Harbor Village residents.
But Marineland has not been devoid of controversy in recent years. Residents there fended off a pitch to raze the land in 2004 and turn it into a parking structure topped with housing.
In 2003, the Hermosa Beach City Council rejected a plan from the school district to purchase the property to aid a school expansion.
George Turk, president of the nonprofit Millennium Housing, didn’t expect residents to launch a purchase so quickly, but he wasn’t surprised that the tenants would aspire to landownership in Hermosa Beach.
“I didn’t know there would be such a rush,” he said. “I can understand wanting to own a piece of Hermosa Beach.”
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AROUND CALIFORNIA - NEWS FOR OWNERS OF MOBILE/MANUFACTURED HOMES 