Los Angeles County Supervisors approved a mobile home park rent-control ordinance on Tuesday for unincorporated areas that will limit rental pad inflation to 3 percent a year — the latest sign of high housing costs in L.A.
The Los Angeles Times reported the supervisors approved the Mobilehome Rent Regulation Ordinance by a 3-to-1 vote. It initially provides a 180-day temporary limit on rent increases to maximum of 3 percent a year for annual or short term leases. The ordinance is scheduled to come back before the supervisors next month for another vote to make it permanent.
Supervisor Janice Hahn, who sponsored the rent control measure that will impact about 8,500 mobile home tenants, told Southern California Public Radio that she proposed the ordinance because skyrocketing apartment rents are spilling over to mobile home pad rentals.
Hahn argued that with 100 California communities already having passed rent control laws to protect mobile home tenants, “If we believe in affordable housing, and we believe in keeping these people from being homeless, we should really protect people who are in our mobile home parks in L.A. County.”
Hahn claimed that LA County needs an immediate temporary ordinance to stop mobile home operators from raising rents before a study is conducted to measure if tenants are rent-burdened. But the language of her ordinance states that it can be “extended or replaced by the Board of Supervisors.”
According to a June report from Apartment List, the median rental price for a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles was $1,750, and $1,360 for a one-bedroom unit. That was up 3.2 percent, about the same as inflation in the last 12 months, but down from the 6 percent average annual rate since 2015 that had been more than triple the rate of inflation.
Patricia Boerger of the Manufactured Housing Institute told Curbed late last year: “Mobile homes in the 1960s were for young people who were starting out and making their place in the world. Anything after 1976, though, can’t be called a mobile home.”
With the average sales price for a new manufactured home approximately $292,600 less than a site-built home, mobile homes are a form of low-cost housing for 18 million Americans with an average income is about $28,300 a year and 13 percent on food stamps.
According to the Mobile Home Park Homeowners Allegiance, most residents own their mobile home but rent a pad from a landlord. Allegiance member Kort & Scott Mobile Home Parks, for example, is one of the largest operators in California and has 13 parks in Los Angeles County. K&S monthly pad rents in L.A. County range from a low in Carson of $398 at Laco Mobile Home Park and $420 a month in Carson Gardens Trailer Lodge, to a high of $1,700 a month at the Royal Western Mobile Home Park in Gardena.
Jarryd Gonzales, spokesperson for the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, told SCPR before the vote that the mobile home park owners do not believe that a crisis exists: “We’re saying take a wait-and-see approach, as opposed to rushing right in and limiting increases on rent, and going on in with a rent control ordinance.”
Gonzales argued that rent control could have unintended negative consequences, including cutting off capital improvements, or potentially causing mobile home park operators to shut down, evict the tenants, and sell their property.
This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California
