Home Tab - In the News

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and top Democrats announced Friday evening that they have reached an agreement to place limits on how much landlords can increase a tenant’s rent each year.

The compromise offers a stronger path forward for Assembly Bill 1482, which cleared a key budget committee earlier on Friday.

California voters made their views on rent control clear last November when they rejected Proposition 10 by nearly 20 percentage points.

While Californians face an unprecedented housing crisis, they understood that rent control doesn’t work. Period. Instead, it discourages development that’s essential for bringing down housing prices.

Apparently Gov. Gavin Newsom and Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, didn’t get the message.

Attempting to strike a balance between the interests of renters and property owners, Inglewood approved a rent control ordinance this week that caps increases at 5% — lower than first proposed — but imposes protections against unfair evictions.

Landlords and realtor groups earned a win in the California Capitol this week after lawmakers shelved a bill to restrict evictions and amended another to limit caps on rent.

A bill aimed at protecting California tenants from “egregious” rent hikes cleared a key hurdle in the state Legislature today, less than 24 hours after pro-tenant groups learned their latest try to expand tighter rent controls throughout California is flailing in the Capitol.

ST. HELENA — A lawsuit is challenging the wording of a June 4 ballot measure that will determine the fate of rent stabilization at St. Helena’s only mobile home park.

Tom Vence, a Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park resident who described himself last October as the park’s weekend manager, filed suit in Napa County Superior Court on March 25. His suit claims that the City Council’s agreed-upon ballot language for Measure F violates state laws requiring ballot questions to be truthful and impartial.

A lawsuit is challenging the wording of a June 4 ballot measure that will determine the fate of rent stabilization at St. Helena’s only mobile home park.

Tom Vence, a Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park resident who described himself last October as the park’s weekend manager, filed suit in Napa County Superior Court on March 25. His suit claims that the City Council’s agreed-upon ballot language for Measure F violates state laws requiring ballot questions to be truthful and impartial.

The new owner of a senior mobile home park straddling the border of Fullerton and Anaheim is pulling back on monthly rent increases of more than $200 for nearly 400 residents until at least Sept. 1, saying the company had done “too much, too soon.”

“The increasing concerns that were being voiced by the residents required a pause and an opportunity to initiate a dialogue with those residents to better understand their concerns,” said Peter Whittingham, a spokesman for Saunders Property Company, which purchased the Rancho La Paz Mobilehome Park last month.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday he’s continuing to work with state lawmakers on what he hopes will be a deal to stabilize California’s rising rents.

“We’ve been working behind the scenes with a number of the key parties and participants to see if there is a — forgive the vernacular — a deal on this that could be a constructive first step,” Newsom told reporters after hosting a roundtable on affordable housing in Sacramento. “I’m not wedded to any specific proposal right now.”

Proponents of rent control, which is threatening to make a comeback in the California Legislature, often portray the opposition as consisting entirely of landlords and developers. The implication is that the unbridled greed of real estate interests is all that stands in their way.

The City Council put off a decision on a mobile home rent protection ordinance this week after over a dozen speakers told the council it simply wasn’t ready as proposed. The mobile home rent stabilization ordinance would have allowed a renter to have their rent reviewed by a city staff member on increases over 4 percent annually.The ordinance will be similar to the city’s rent review policy for apartments, which offers mediation between tenants and property owners on disputes once rent is increased by a certain threshold.

What happened to all that talk about rent control?

Less than four months after an initiative to allow cities to expand rent control failed overwhelmingly at the ballot box, and less than four months after then-incoming Gov. Gavin Newsom talked about brokering a compromise between tenant and landlord groups, no new legislation from lawmakers or specific proposals from the Newsom administration have been introduced to cap how much rents can rise.

WATSONVILLE — The city of Watsonville is moving forward with new zoning protections for its mobile and manufactured homes, the latest step in an ongoing effort to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing for low-income residents.

Under the new rules, each of Watsonville’s nine mobile home parks would be protected from development unless a special use permit is granted for a narrow range of other high-priority land uses, such as churches, cemeteries, child care centers and schools.

It’s been almost 41 years since Proposition 13 passed in 1978, lowering property taxes for every home, apartment building, commercial structure, farm and parking lot in California.

Through almost all that time, the initiative sponsored by longtime anti-tax gadflies Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann remained a sacred cow, a third rail that election officials and candidates of every stripe feared to touch for fear of political electrocution.

Over strong objections from the owners of Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park, the St. Helena City Council voted 3-2 Tuesday in favor of an ordinance that would cap rent increases for some of the park’s residents.

Councilmembers Paul Dohring, Geoff Ellsworth and Mary Koberstein voted for the new rent stabilization ordinance, with Mayor Alan Galbraith and Councilmember Peter White voting against it. The ordinance will undergo a few modifications before coming back to the council for final adoption.

Once thought of as a sacred cow, Proposition 13, the tax revolt measure passed in 1978, is now under attack. Schools and Communities First, a coalition of nearly 300 groups and leaders, has qualified an initiative for the Nov. 2020 ballot that would lift caps on property taxes for commercial and industrial properties.

The coalition says that if the initiative is approved, it will reclaim more than $11 billion a year for K-12 schools, community college, cities, counties and special districts that support everything from parks to libraries.

Soaring rents are a serious problem. Many Californians are paying much more rent than in the past or cannot afford to live where they’d like to. Unfortunately, Proposition 10’s solution — allowing for more rent control — does not fix this problem for the community as a whole. Instead it helps current tenants who decide to stay in their units long term, but hurts future renters and those who might want or need to move.

In less than five weeks, California voters will decide on Proposition 10, a ballot initiative that would allow cities and counties across the state to expand rent control.

Supporters of the measure say it will offer relief for tenants during a time of unprecedented housing affordability problems in California. Opponents contend it will stymie housing construction — the levels are already low — and further increase costs.

Here’s a rundown of some of the difficulties renters face and how Proposition 10 would affect them and broader affordability issues.

When California voters get tired of waiting for their politicians to act, they turn to the statewide ballot initiative as their weapon of last resort.

The Sacramento Bee’s readers have been telling us for months through the “Your Voice” feature that the out-of-control cost of housing has become a major concern — if not cause for alarm. So it should be no surprise that when Californians cast their general election ballots this fall, more than one-third of the measures on their ballot are designed to address the need for affordable housing.

A majority of the St. Helena City Council wants to continue investigating a rent stabilization ordinance for Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park, an idea that’s sharply dividing park residents.

An ordinance would give Vineyard Valley residents the choice of signing a short-term lease of 12 months or less in which rent increases would be capped or a long-term lease that would not be subject to the ordinance.

Rent hikes greater than 3 percent will be banned temporarily at mobile home parks in unincorporated Los Angeles County starting in early October, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided.

The county board voted 3-1 on Tuesday, Sept. 4, to approve on a second reading a six-month moratorium on rent hikes for mobile home spaces, a move designed to protect those residents from preemptive rent hikes while permanent rent control for such housing is under consideration. The measure becomes effective in 30 days.

An estimated 5.6 percent of all Americans, or 17.7 million people, live in manufactured homes, commonly referred to as “mobile homes” or “trailers.” Metros located in the South and Southwest have the highest share of households living in mobile homes.

The number of mobile homes and trailer parks in the United States grew rapidly in the 1980s, when the federal government slashed funding for affordable housing. Today, mobile homes are the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S., providing shelter for one in ten households living below the poverty line.

Unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County could see rent control for mobile homes reinstated more than 23 years after county leaders allowed similar restrictions to lapse.

On a 3-1 vote Tuesday, Aug. 14, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors supported a six-month moratorium on rent hikes greater than 3 percent for mobile home spaces. The stop-gap measure is designed to keep park owners from raising rent before a permanent rent control ordinance under review takes effect.

Tenants rights advocates in two Southern California cities missed the deadline to get rent control initiatives on the November ballot, although they still have a shot at the election cycle in 2020, city and elections officials said Friday, Aug. 3.

Santa Ana and Glendale became the fifth and sixth cities in the region to fail to get rent referendums before voters this fall. Initiative drives already failed in four other local cities: Long Beach, Pasadena, Inglewood and Pomona.

The City of Chino reached a $1.5 million settlement this month with a mobile home park owner who brought a lawsuit against the city, alleging the council’s actions caused a loss of income by delaying and interfering with plans to convert the park to resident ownership.

The lawsuit, which originally asked for $34 million, was filed in July 2010 by Chino MHC, owner of Lamplighter Chino Mobile Home Park, which is on the northwest corner of Philadelphia Street and Ramona Avenue.

SANTA CRUZ >> Expect this fall’s campaign over just cause eviction and rent control in the city of Santa Cruz to be expensive.

The measure would require relocation assistance for tenants evicted without just cause from single-family homes, accessory dwellings and condos as well as apartments built before February 1995 and limit rent increases in apartments built before that date.

Ballot arguments were due July 10 with the city clerk and rebuttals due Friday, with the first campaign finance report due July 31.

The owners of Willits Mobile Home Park and many park residents attended Wednesday’s City Council meeting to make their voices heard about raises in rent, alleged issues with the new management company Boa Vida, and a potential rent stabilization ordinance. There was standing room only at the meeting.

After much discussion, City Council decided not to move forward with implementing a rent stabilization ordinance.

SACRAMENTO — Proponents of a November ballot measure that would let California cities expand rent control say negotiations for a compromise have collapsed and that the issue will now be decided by voters.

The all-or-nothing effort to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act is likely to be one of the costliest fights of the fall election. State lawmakers had hoped to reach a deal in the Legislature that tenant and landlord groups could agree to, but that now seems “highly unlikely,” Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said Friday.