Home Tab - In the News

MHI informs us that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued guidance clarifying how housing providers can comply with the Fair Housing Act (the Act) when assessing a person’s request to have an assistance animal reside in their home because of a disability. MHI has been working with HUD, with input from its state associations, to address this issue as more manufactured home community owners and operators are being presented with this scenario and the potential it has for violating the Act.

The story of the parks is important because the wholesale destruction has revealed gaps in the public and private response to disasters in mobile home parks, according to interviews with owners and state and local officials and public records. Most owners had vastly inadequate insurance and might not be able to cover the costs of repairs. Confusion about jurisdiction over the parks — including among government officials themselves — has led to delays and frustrations.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday announced he’s backing a campaign to raise taxes on business properties in California, joining powerful unions in supporting a proposal that would raise money for schools and local governments.

Ever since Proposition 13, California’s iconic property tax limit, was passed by voters in 1978, unions and their political allies have yearned to either repeal or modify it. After years of cogitation, they gathered enough voter signatures to put their “Schools and Communities First” measure on the ballot.

Several Highland mobile home residents asking for “rent stabilization” during the March 26 City Council meeting learned that should the city pass such an ordinance California law exempts their long-term mobile home leases from the rent control.

During the last City Council meeting, several Highland mobile home residents took the public comment opportunity to voice complaints about conditions and rising costs at their mobile home parks asking the council to consider placing a rent control ordinance on a future meeting agenda.

The Arcata City Council directed city staff to research the possibility of placing a temporary ban on the closure and conversion of mobile home parks to a different use Wednesday night.

A ban on closing and converting mobile home parks for other use would allow time for the city to create zoning that would protect mobile home park residents from the threat of eviction. Once a zoning type for mobile home parks is in place, securing land use for mobile home parks alone, the city could then create an ordinance according to these zoning protections.

The Pasadena City Council on Monday approved an expanded set of protections for people who rent their homes, which officials say strikes a compromise between the interests of tenants and their landlords.

Renter advocates last year pushed the council to strengthen the city’s 2004 tenant protection law, last updated in 2017, after apartment renters at a South Roosevelt Avenue property were told to pack their bags within 60 days after the building changed hands.

California is a costly place to live. Homes cost 2.5 times the national average and rents are 50 percent higher than the national average. According to the non-partisan State Legislative Analyst’s Office, California’s housing crisis is fueled by a lack of supply and high demand.

Californians not only understand this, they feel it. In a recent CNBC poll, the high cost of homeownership was the leading reason why 53 percent of Californians are considering leaving the state, a jump over the 49 percent polled last year and this view is strongest among millennials (63 percent).

After San Leandro mobile home owners, many seniors with limited means, spoke Monday night of suffering harassment by their mobile home park owners, along with fears of retaliation, the San Leandro City Council voted to continue an agenda item that would have given them some protections from displacement.

The council, which unanimously voted to direct staff to further study the proposed ordinance, also accepted a “gentlemen’s agreement” offered by the city’s nine mobile home park owners to not raise rents for 90 days, while they meet with city staff.

In an attempt to slow displacement and upheaval in communities where rents are rising faster than incomes, Oregon has just adopted the nation’s first statewide rent control law, capping the annual increase landlords may impose on tenants. Sounds dramatic? Well, it could happen in California too, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers are discussing similar efforts to stabilize rents amid a long-term, crisis-level housing shortage.

At last! Democracy prevails! Residents of Vineyard Valley as well as those registered in the City of St. Helena will be allowed to vote on their preference for or against the Rent Stabilization Ordinance recently passed by the city council. The ordinance applies only to Vineyard Valley.

SANTA CRUZ — New legislation proposed by a Monterey Bay state assemblyman would strengthen protections for mobile home residents facing displacement, in the name of California’s affordable housing goals.

California might be about to undermine the best argument it has to attract new business and jobs. A ballot initiative has qualified to eliminate the protections against property tax increases guaranteed by Proposition 13, to the extent applied to business property. The importance of Proposition 13 to job growth in our state has to be better understood: at present, our state’s political leaders appear primed to support this change.

Oceanside plans to better regulate its short-term vacation rentals by hiring a full-time enforcement officer, requiring licenses and annual fees, and streamlining the tax collection process.

The proposal outlined by first-term Councilman Chris Rodriguez got the City Council’s unanimous approval Wednesday, along with the stipulation that details of the program be worked out by city staffers and ready for the council’s consideration in 120 days.

After years of bitter back-and-forth with resistant neighbors, the newly elected San Jose City Council pushed ahead with a project to house formerly homeless people southeast of Willow Glen in converted shipping containers.

The council approved a rezoning request that will allow the containers to be placed and turned into 60 permanent supportive housing units on Evans Lane near Canoas Gardens Ave.

The price tag? Some $600,000 per unit, or $2,500 per square foot, according to Rachel VanderVeen, a deputy director in the city’s Housing Department.

SANTA CRUZ — The Santa Cruz City Council took the first step toward reviving recently lapsed landlord eviction limits Tuesday, putting in place temporary rules for up to a year in a 4-3 vote just before midnight.

If the council gives final approval to the interim ordinance with a second vote at a coming meeting, landlords once again will need to ensure they have “just cause” for their tenant evictions. Acceptable eviction reasons range from failure to pay rent to nuisance violations.

Opponents of rent stabilization at Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park have gathered enough signatures to force the City Council to repeal the new ordinance or put it on the ballot.

Opponents needed to collect 344 valid signatures, equivalent to 10 percent of St. Helena’s registered voters. They submitted 579 signatures, and of the 364 checked by the Napa County Election Division, 345 were confirmed to be valid.

Sacramento’s rent-control wars hit a boil this week. And became incredibly convoluted as well.

A petition drive to stifle rent hikes by landlords got a boost at City Hall, albeit from a not entirely supportive City Council. The same day, a competing proposal, kinder to landlords, written by three council members, saw its first formal hearing. And a business group vowed a lawsuit to kill the petition effort.

A rent-controlled apartment in the Bay Area is a coveted find that tenants will hang onto as long as possible. So why is a California ballot measure that would allow cities to expand rent control not just losing here, but trailing by a wider margin than it is statewide?

Facing opposition from the owners of Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park and many of its residents, the St. Helena City Council is moving ahead with a rent stabilization ordinance that would limit rent increases in the park.

An ordinance would cap rent increases for park residents on short-term leases of one year or less. Residents would be able to choose between a short-term lease that would be subject to rent stabilization or a long-term contract that would not.

Proposition 10 is a fine example of chasing a disaster with a catastrophe.

The disaster is the housing crisis in California. The escalation of home prices and rents has far outpaced wage growth, helping to give California the nation’s highest poverty rate when adjusted for the cost of living.

The catastrophe is Prop. 10, the “Local Rent Control Initiative.”