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Initiative efforts seek rent control for senior mobile home parks in county, city of Lakeport CA

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Efforts are under way to place initiatives that would implement rent control in senior mobile home parks on upcoming Lakeport and county ballots.

Lakeport resident Nelson Strasser is the chief proponent of the initiative effort in Lakeport, and he has joined forced with the Save Our Seniors Committee, which is working on the countywide initiative. So far, no initiative is under way to govern the city of Clearlake.

City Attorney Steve Brookes and County Counsel Anita Grant both provided ballot titles and summaries for the parallel efforts, and the required legal notices were published.

Strasser said he and the Save Our Senior Committee gathered about 200 signatures – of which he estimated 60 to 70 were for Lakeport residents – last Friday and Saturday, and also registered 10 new voters.

“We’re pretty enthused,” he said, adding that it appeared to be an “easy sell” once they explained their purpose.

The language of the initiatives are, for the most part, similar on their main points, said Strasser, with some minor exceptions.

Both call for rent control to be imposed in senior mobile home parks, which the county measure defines as “one where at least one inhabitant of 80 percent of the mobile homes is over 55 years of age and which has at least two mobile homes.” Strasser’s measure defines such parks as have one inhabitant age 65 or older in 80 percent of the homes.

The two measures also would roll back all rental rates to those in effect on Jan. 1, 2012, and prohibit all space rental increases in senior mobile home parks unless there is an increase in Social Security benefits, and then only to the extent of that percentage increase. Violations would result in misdemeanor penalties in both proposed initiatives.

The measures allow capital improvement costs, including reasonable financing costs, to be passed through to residents in a senior mobile home park only if a majority of homeowners occupying spaces affected by the pass through consent to the improvement. Government-mandated expenses could be passed through to tenants; in the county measure, passing on such costs would require a 90-day written notice.

The county measure requires that space rentals decrease proportionately to any reduction in Social Security benefits; prohibits any rent increase in a senior mobile home park when a tenant moves from a space due to illness, incapacity, death or the sale of the mobile home; and would not apply to leases more than 12 months in duration, to mobile home spaces constructed after 1991 and mobile homes which are not the tenant’s primary residence.

The Lakeport measure would provide “limited exemptions for rent control for mobile home spaces with leases over 12 months in duration, for mobile home spaces constructed after 1991, and where the mobile home space is not the tenant’s principal residence,” and forbid rent increases when a mobile home space is transferred to a new mobile home owner or occupant.

Strasser said he’s aiming to get the Lakeport initiative on the ballot this November, and must collect 415 signatures by July 1.

For the county initiative, Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley said it will require a minimum of 2,115 signatures, which is based on a percentage of the total number of ballots cast during the Nov. 2, 2010, gubernatorial election.

Fridley said the county initiative’s proponents have 180 days from April 12 – when they picked up the copy of the final ballot title and summary from her office – to collect the necessary signatures.

They have not so far requested a special election, which Fridley said would require them to collect a greater number of signatures. She said there is not enough time for them to get on the November ballot, so if they make their deadline it would go on the next statewide election ballot, which would be in June 2014.

The origins of the effort

Strasser purchased a mobile home in Fairgrounds Village Senior Park in Lakeport more than a year ago.

He began spearheading a rent control movement after the park’s new owners began to implement large rent increases, including a recent 7.5-percent hike. He said that raised his rent from $330 to $355 each month.

He said there are no limits on the amount of rent that can be increased at a time, with only a 90-day notice required.

For many seniors in the parks, Strasser said they don’t have a means to go elsewhere if the rents get too high, and called the high rent increases “vulture capitalism.”

Strasser circulated a petition among fellow park residents, getting between 40 and 50 signatures, and then, during citizen’s input at a Lakeport City Council meeting last August, he asked the council to consider implementing rent control in senior mobile home parks. However, the council since has taken no action to hold a separate discussion on the matter.

He wanted to pursue an initiative, and said he met with City Manager Margaret Silveira and Brookes, who asked him to come up with an alternative, so he called the owner of his park and asked if they would commit to a year of not raising space rents.

Strasser said the park’s owner never called back – he’s still not heard from them – and he decided to move forward on the initiative, which he crafted based on successful initiatives elsewhere. It would form the basis, with some minor changes, for the county initiative, according to Save Our Seniors Committee member Heather Powers.

Powers, a resident at Sterling Shores Estates in north Lakeport, said she became involved in the county initiative effort after being involved with the attempt to negotiate a fair rent contract with the park owner, which she said has raised rents there about 44 percent over a seven-year period.

After finding out about Strasser’s plans, she said the idea came up to pursue a countywide initiative, using language similar to Strasser’s. Eventually, the Save Our Seniors Committee was formed in April, growing out of a homeowners association group.

Brookes said he has concerns about the constitutionality of Strasser’s initiative, specifically, because of due process concerns, retroactivity and issue of “taking” from the property owners.

Strasser believes the measure will hold up, and said he doesn’t see evidence of a taking.

Eric Johnson, spokesman for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, said rent control is a complex issue.

“There are some state rules on how rent control is implemented,” he said.

While state Housing and Community Development has jurisdiction for mobile home parks in relation to making sure they adhere to codes and standards – and provide livable standards including sewer and trash collection – “We don’t enforce the rent control,” Johnson said.

That leaves it up to the jurisdictions. Brookes said there are administrative complexities for the jurisdictions where rent control is implemented, and he expects that the city of Lakeport – and, separately, the county – would need to create bureaucracies to track whether rent control rules were being implemented and followed.

This isn’t the first time that some kind of rent control effort has taken place in Lakeport. In 1988 there was an effort to get an initiative on the ballot to require the city to implement a rent control committee, but that ultimately failed. Brookes said he doesn’t recall any other rent control efforts in the city.

“There’s a lot of municipalities that have rent control,” said Strasser, explaining that many are tied to the Consumer Price Index.

The local measures are tied to Social Security increases, which relies on a weighted CPI, which Strasser considered the most fair approach.

The city of Ukiah has a rent stabilization ordinance in place for mobile homes, as do dozens of other jurisdictions around the state, including Alameda, Sonoma and Ventura counties, and the cities of Calistoga, Concord, Cotati, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Novato, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol and Sonoma, according to a list provided by the San Luis Obispo Mobilehome Residents Assistance Panel.

A minority of areas, including San Luis Obispo County, the cities of Cathedral City, Delano, East Palo Alto, Escondido, Hemet, Indio, Lancaster, Rancho Mirage, Rohnert Park and Santa Monica, had rent control implemented through initiative, based on the panel’s list.

Weighing issues for parks

According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, there are about 100 mobile home and RV parks in all of Lake County – including the cities of Lakeport and Clearlake. Available mobile home spaces in the parks range from as few as two spaces up to as many as 158.

Regarding the many parks in the county’s jurisdiction, Powers said the committee hasn’t directly identified all of the parks where the initiative would apply other than Sterling Shores. The owners of that park – Shamrock Millco-Sterling Shores LLC of Paradise Valley, Ariz. – did not respond to a call seeking comment from Lake County News.

In addition to his own park, among the parks in Lakeport that Strasser identified as fitting the senior mobile home park definition was Lakeport Lagoons on South Main Street.

Manager Paula Duggan said she didn’t think the initiative was necessary as, in the case of her park, “We always try to keep it well below the CPI.”

Duggan added, “There’s times that we don’t raise the rent for three or four years because we’re trying to be fair to the residents.”

She acknowledged that some people have come to her park from Sterling Shores because of high land leases there, and said some mobile home park owners are looking to get rich and price out residents. That’s not the case with Arton Inc. of Redwood City, which owns Lakeport Lagoons, she said.

Northport Trailer Resort in the county doesn’t fit the definition of a senior mobile home park, but Mary Ann McQueen, who along with husband Jerry has owned the park since 1988, is familiar with efforts to stabilize rents.

The McQueens, whose park has 26 mobile home spaces as well as 20 RV spots, were among the park owners who signed onto a resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors in September 2008 calling for rent stabilization for all of the county’s mobile home residents.

She said Sterling Shores – which had been a proponent of the measure – ultimately didn’t sign on to that effort.

That 2008 agreement called for maximum rental increase of between 3 and 7 percent at a time, she said.

“I understand their frustration,” McQueen said of tenants who have formed to address high rents.

However, she cautioned that rent control measures have been expensive to implement in jurisdictions where they have been adopted.

She said park owners also have to contend with ever-increasing costs, among them, water and sewer, repairs, construction and hiring.