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Oceanside CA Mobile Home Parks – Rent decontrol is fair, saves affordable housing

By Amy Epsten

As the debate wages over vacancy decontrol in Oceanside’s mobile home parks, we need to set the record straight and take a look at how we wound up here.

Most park owners are also seniors and veterans (like my grandfather) who built these parks in the 1960s to provide affordable housing and try to run a fair, sustainable business with the hopes of passing it on to their children.

Owners took a risk in buying a vacant property, getting it zoned for a mobile home park, then building a beautiful park with lots of amenities and maintaining all the streets and utilities. The parks eventually filled with happy residents paying a market rent to enjoy the many benefits of mobile home park living.

Then the nightmare began.

In 1984, the Oceanside City Council decided the votes of a few residents were more important than private property rights. The council determined that providing affordable housing should be on the backs of the park owners, without a government subsidy or any financial means test for residents. Fair? Not a chance.

Fast forward 27 years. The parks are getting older and require more maintenance. Park owners are not allowed to increase rent more than 75 percent of the Consumer Price Index. What choice does that leave park owners? They are tired of the government telling them what to do with their property. They have to consider closing the parks and converting them to a more sustainable use.

Meanwhile, park residents don’t want to pay a dime more for rent, even though they never took a financial means test to qualify for this affordable housing, and many of them use these beachfront properties as vacation homes or buy up multiple mobile homes and rent them to turn a substantial profit of their own. Who wouldn’t want a deal this great?

However, Oceanside taxpayers have spent more than $3 million to defend rent control for these residents.

This $3 million could have been much better spent on fire, police or anything else.

Three council members have recognized that rent control is unsustainable and stepped up to offer a compromise. They don’t want the parks to close and to see seniors on the streets, so they suggested vacancy decontrol. This compromise protects all current park residents, as the ordinance will never allow their rent to increase more than 75 percent of the CPI. The space rent can only go to a market rate upon sale of their mobile home.

Despite popular scare tactics, vacancy decontrol does not lower the value of a mobile home. All homes sell for their market value, not the inflated value on someone else’s property. The market determines home prices, not rent control.

This debate comes down to fairness. Will either party be happy? No, but the council is attempting to do the right thing to form a compromise which will keep parks open and preserve affordable mobile home park living while protecting all current residents that bought their mobile home under the rent control ordinance.