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Oceanside CA Mobile Home Parks – Rent decontrol is fair, saves affordable housing
August 11, 2011 by parkguy1 · 2 Comments
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.
Rent Decontrol is absolutely unfair. It is a real shame that the city of Oceanside buckled to the park owners,.
People should realize that in a mobile home park there are two sets of property rights, and both should be respected. Yes, the park owner is a property owner. But so are the homeowners, who paid a lot of money for their homes.With vacancy decontrol, they totally lose their equity, their home value.
In a mobile home park, the higher the space rent, the lower the home value. Because if the new owner has to pay more in space rent, they can afford less on a mortgage.
Let’s say a homeowner has purchased a mobile home in a park for $100,000, and is paying a mortgage on that. With vacancy decontrol, lets’ say the homeowner wants to sell his home, but the park owner wants to raise the rent 1000% percent for the new owner. Then the value of the home has plummeted greatly, and the selling homeowner has to sell the home for way less than he bought it for. Yet, he still is responsible for paying off that $100k mortgage, even though he may hve only been able to sell it for $20k now, due to the much higher space rent.
The home owners are property owners too, they have made the largest investment of their lives in buying their home, and the park owner should not be able to steal their home equity like that.
Absurd, that the article says vacancy decontrol preserves affordable housing, when in fact it is the exact opposite.
I am not familiar with Oceanside, but if it really is right by the ocean, in the coastal zone, I would recommend that the homeowners sue the city for non-compliance with the Mello Act. Find a good lawyer, like the best advocate for mobile home owners, attorney William Constantine of Santa Cruz.
Congratulations Mike, for living beach front in Pacific Palisades, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Southern California on privately funded welfare, at rates comparable to what mobile home park residents pay to live in the California central valley. You must be so proud.
I have little sympathy for those renting someone else’s property, demanding that a private property owner subsidize their housing costs. Mobile home park space rent should be determined by the market and not by politicians preaching for rent control (and spending taxpayer dollars to fight for it) to get votes from those benefiting from rent control. These people living in beautiful beachfront communities for the same rent being paid in Fresno (no offense) and selling their mobile homes for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, when an identical mobile home, not in rent control, would sell for only $20,000!!!
Mobile home parks are an affordable way to live and these residents knew full well that the homes they purchased were personal property, a depreciating asset, like a boat or an RV and that is why they are so affordable. To turn around and sell these homes 10 to 30 times their actual value because of the rent control forced on a private investor is unethical, immoral and un-American.
I hope that all these beach front or highly desirable area Cities abolish rent control and that those unable to afford the high life, move to an area that they can actually afford, like everyone else. On the other hand if these rent control Cities want to subsidize the rent for these poor unfortunate beach community dwellers (public welfare) at the expense of, I don’t know, City parks and schools, I’m sure the city residents actually paying market rates / prices / property taxes for their homes and apartments would happily oblige…not.
If low income residents need help with their housing costs, it should be a part of public welfare, not a scam forced on private individuals.
BTW…For obvious reasons, I don’t own any mobile home parks in rent control.