By Dezmond Remington | Source |
After almost a year of advocacy and tinkering, Fortuna’s city council decided last night to adopt a rent stabilization ordinance for the 283 mobile homes within its city limits.
Last summer, residents of the Royal Crest mobile home park, many of them on fixed incomes and threatened by the possibility of becoming homeless, began clamoring for rules that would govern how much the owners of the park could increase their rents. The back-and-forth negotiations between the residents, the city, and the owners has taken up much of the last nine months.
Even in its completed form, none of the representatives from the park’s advocacy organization Save Our Seniors (SOS) were content with the RSO, though most of them thanked the city council for hearing their complaints and working with them.
The ordinance went into effect immediately. It ties the amount rent can be raised on all mobile homes to the Consumer Price Index in the Western U.S. up to an annual maximum of 5%, though there are so-called “pass-through” exceptions for infrastructure work. Members of the SOS railed against those exemptions; SOS advocate Ricardo Tallamente said they were “too broad and too loose.”
The ordinance also charges an appointee of Fortuna’s city manager to decide if the rent increases are necessary. Worried about potential bias and excessive waste of staff time, members of the SOS also disagreed with that provision of the ordinance; mobile home advocate Hilary Mosher said she “begged” them to reconsider.
Rent increases upon the sale of a mobile home are also banned.
Only a few people were against the whole idea of an RSO. One person, “Saul,” who claimed to represent a group of Fortuna’s mobile home park owners, said they wanted an MOU with the city and park residents instead, as did Fortuna city councilmember Abe Stevens. Stevens, who also had some ideological “free market considerations,” ended up being the lone vote against the ordinance. Saul called the RSO “absurd” and “counterproductive.”
Amy Nilsen, Fortuna’s city manager, defended the RSO, as did the city’s hired attorney Michael Colantuono. Property owners have to go through the city before they make any capital improvements that would require raising the rent. The RSO is based on an RSO passed by Carson, California, in 2018. Colantuono said that ordinance was “battle-hardened,” shaped by multiple lawsuits into stronger law that would prevent Fortuna from fighting a succession of legal battles defending their citizens.
The council will review the necessity and effectiveness of the ordinance in 18 months.
The ordinance passed 4-1; Mayor Mike Johnson shut down the applause.
Mosher told the Outpost during a phone interview today that Colantuono’s arguments impressed her, and she was willing to wait and see how well Fortuna’s RSO worked. She commended the city council for their speed, hard work, and compassion, and the residents at Royal Crest for their energy.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s good,” she said. “…Fortuna — they’ve done a really good thing. They’re preserving an important source of affordable housing, and a significant source of affordable housing in that community. We do feel confident that the city council is in it for the long haul, should any problems arise. We applaud them.”
ED. Note: Hilary Mosher is GSMOL Region 2 Manager, and has been the force behind a number of RSOs in the state.
