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Santa Rosa, CA – Proposed Mobile Home Park Condo Conversion
March 17, 2011 by parkguy1 · Leave a Comment
By BRETT WILKISON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Sonoma County government’s latest stance on disputed condo-style conversions of mobile home parks is expected to come today in a Planning Commission vote.
For the second time, commissioners will take up a plan to subdivide the 191-unit Sequoia Gardens Mobile Home Park off Fulton Road, a county-controlled area within the city of Santa Rosa.
Under the change, tenants would have the option of buying the land beneath their homes or continuing to rent.
But park residents, who packed a Feb. 17 Planning Commission hearing, are opposed to the conversion, saying high purchase prices and rent increases will push them out of their homes.
“If I am forced to move out of the park by these rent increases then I will lose everything,” 17-year Sequoia resident Mary Lynne Nicholas, 72, told commissioners.
The park owners, an out-of-the-area investment group, claim the conversion would not adversely impact residents. Low-income tenants would be covered by state rent control until they move while market-rate rents for all other tenants would be phased in over five years, according to a report submitted by the group, Sequoia Park Associates.
But because that report did not use actual rent figures or disclose possible purchase prices, the owners’ assurances aren’t credible, critics said.
“They’re just playing a game,” said William Constantine, the residents’ attorney.
Don Jurow, an owners’ representative, declined to provide rental and purchase figures in an interview, saying the report “spelled out all the facts.”
Similar disputes between mobile home residents and park owners have cropped up around the county and the state.
Critics say the conversions are an end run around local rent control rules that govern parks, which make up one of the state’s largest blocks of affordable housing, especially for seniors.
Separate county and Santa Rosa city ordinances that sought to limit owner-driven conversions were struck down in 2009 in a court challenge by Sequoia Park Associates.
Commissioners are set to deliberate and vote today. Public comments were taken until Feb. 17.
County planners have recommended denial on two grounds:
– A required survey showed residents overwhelmingly oppose the conversion, with 164 against it and two for it.
– The park’s well water has been off-limits to drinking since 2009 because of higher-than-allowed levels of arsenic. Owners have provided bottled-water vouchers. A bid to join the city’s water system remains in funding limbo.
Any decision will likely be appealed to the Board of Supervisors.
