By Emma Molloy | Source |
Sonoma leaders, in the coming weeks, will review a plan to update the city statute regulating mobile home park closures, conversions and cessation of use in response to mobile home park residents who say the city’s existing “outdated” policies endanger a significant affordable housing option and leave them vulnerable to corporate park owners.
During City Council’s Sept. 17 meeting, a group of more than 20 residents and mobile home park advocates told city leaders Sonoma’s existing ordinance, which was adopted in 2004, no longer provides them with sufficient protection in today’s rapidly changing and evermore costly housing landscape.
“Across Sonoma County, mobile home park owners are attacking affordable housing,” said Pueblo Serena resident and Sonoma County Mobile Home Owners Association President John Kyle, who was among those who spoke out during the September meeting.
Pueblo Serena is one of three mobile home parks, along with Moon Valley and Sonoma Oaks, within Sonoma city limits. About 1,000 individuals live in these parks, according to advocates, who describe them as a critical source of local affordable housing, providing homes to seniors, working families, low-income families and veterans.
Kyle, who helps mobile home owners by informing them of their rights, noted Sonoma’s success in strengthening protections against rent hikes for mobile home owners with its rent stabilization ordinance.
“This gave Sonoma the most advanced protections in all of California. Because of that, 10% of our residents have enjoyed housing security and Sonoma has preserved a critical part of this housing stock that’s affordable housing,” he told council, adding that still more help is needed.
Over the past couple of years, cities across Sonoma County passed reforms updating often decades-old ordinances, tightening rent control and adding other protections for residents of mobile home parks.
These moves followed a wave of advocacy from mobile home owners, many older and on low or fixed incomes, struggling to stay afloat amid rising costs of living.
Some park owners have pushed back, initiating rent increases of more than 100%, litigation and threats to close parks in the face of restrictions they say prevent them from operating a viable business.
Petaluma, with the strongest resident protections countywide, has been ground zero for park owner pushback. There have been lawsuits and counter-suits between the city and park owners, a series of arbitration cases that were resolved in favor of residents in some cases or against them in others, and repeated threats of evictions and park closures, with crushing effects for those who live there.
Despite the issues in other parts of the county, Sonoma City Manager David Guhin said city officials aren’t aware of any such issues with park owners in Sonoma.
Nevertheless, Sonoma resident Ann Colichidas, who also spoke during public comments at the September council meeting, said, “When I see what’s happening just down the road, I’m relieved it hasn’t happened here yet. But it could.” (ED. Note: Ann is a leader in Sonoma County Mobilehome Owners Association (SCMOA), a coalition allied with GSMOL.)
In an interview with The Sonoma Index-Tribune, Sonoma Mayor Patricia Farrar-Rivas said council is aware that “statewide, there have been people, developers, buying up mobile home properties. So, the goal with this, is to be as proactive as we can.
“We really want to protect our mobile home communities. Certainly, many of our seniors live in our mobile home communities,” she said.
The proposed changes that Sonoma city leaders will likely consider in November are influenced by AB 2782, the bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in Aug. 2020 and that took effect Jan. 1, 2021.
The law gives local governments more authority to protect local affordable housing stock.
Also among its provisions, according to the state Assembly’s Housing and Community Development Committee, which reviewed the measure during its progression through the legislature, it “requires mobile home park owners … take steps to relocate or compensate mobile home park residents when a park is closing or being converted for a different use.”
Caitlin Cornwall a representative of Sonoma Valley Collaborative, a coalition of organizations supporting affordable housing, said, “If we want to preserve housing affordability and make it better in Sonoma Valley, one of the essential parts of that work has to be protecting mobile home parks and residents.
“Mobile homes are the last remaining category of lower-cost housing. It is not subsidized, and so the Collaborative has always seen it as really important that we preserve mobile home parks — both the people who live in them and the sort of real estate structure that they are, which is unusual,” she added.
Cornwall said the proposed updates to Sonoma’s ordinance are “following exactly in lockstep (with AB) 2782 … we are just asking the city and the county to walk through that door sooner rather than later, because of the incredibly urgent situation.”
The draft ordinance submitted to Sonoma City Council addresses several elements, including placing responsibility on park owners to provide “nearby” and “comparable” replacement housing for displaced residents and to cover any associated relocation costs.
The proposal also would require the city to verify that all homeowners and residents have been relocated prior to a park’s closure. It also states the city can deny any closures should they worsen the affordable housing crisis.
This year, rents at Moon Valley, Pueblo Serena and Sonoma Oaks in Sonoma increased by 2%. This annual rent adjustment is part of the city’s Mobilehome Space Rent Protection Ordinance, which links the automatic increases to 80% of the consumer price index, a measure of inflation.
Some mobile home park owners, such as Bill Feeney who owns MV Estates in Santa Rosa and The Cottages in Petaluma, suggest Sonoma County’s long-standing rent control ordinances for mobile home parks are counterproductive.
“These policies are backfiring — driving up housing costs, strangling park operations and fueling unnecessary litigation,” he wrote in an Aug. 24 Close to Home column published on sonomanews.com. “These restrictions are forcing many park owners to shut down and repurpose their properties.”
In a responding Close to Home column, published Sept. 21 on sonomanews.com, Anne B. Anderson, president of the La Mirada, California-based Golden State Manufactured-home Owners League, challenged the park owner’s perspective. She wrote that despite Feeney’s claims that rent stabilization threatens park owners’ ability to do business, mobile home parks remain profitable.
“This is laughable as Feeney charges residents in the parks he owns sky-high ‘ground rents’ for the spaces their homes rest on. The average reported monthly rent in his park in Petaluma, The Cottages, was $1,552 — twice as high as some of the other parks in the city,” Anderson wrote.
