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.
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.
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.
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.
Mobile home park residents in Anaheim and Fullerton may see any planned rent increases capped soon as council members consider rent increase relief options after seniors petitioned both city councils in March.
The Pleasanton City Council has ratified a new rent stabilization agreement with the owners of Hacienda Mobile Home Park on Vineyard Avenue that allows annual increases of no more than 5% through December 2029, when the terms of the agreement expire.
Two months ago, when the Public Policy Institute of California asked the state’s residents to name the top issues that newly inaugurated Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature should address, immigration was No. 1.
Jobs and environmental issues followed, with “homelessness” a distant fourth, cited by just 6 percent of those surveyed.
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.
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.
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.”
There’s long been a somewhat competitive relationship between the power of governors and legislators to make law and the ability of voters to overturn what the politicians wrought and/or make law themselves via the initiative process.
However in recent years that relationship has evolved from merely competitive to something approaching hostility.
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.
In the wake of a failed ballot measure to expand rent control, California Democratic lawmakers are introducing a host of new measures that aim to increase protections for tenants.
The bills, unveiled Thursday, include efforts to prevent landlords statewide from raising rents above a to-be-determined level, and to let cities and counties restrict rents on more apartments than currently allowed.
A group of Assembly Democrats introduced a bundle of housing bills on Thursday, signaling to Gavin Newsom that they were ready to work with him on fulfilling one of the new governor’s campaign promises.
In that package is Assembly Bill 1482, a measure that would cap annual rent increases. The bill would not apply to local ordinances or units already under rent control.
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).
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.
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.
It’s no secret that California is a very expensive place to live. California homes are being sold at two-and-half times the national average and rents are twice as much.
Perhaps, there is no greater example that the dream of home ownership is dead than a taxpayer-financed housing project in San Jose.
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.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed the nation’s first statewide mandatory rent control measure on Thursday, giving a victory to housing advocates who say spiraling rent costs in the economically booming state have fueled widespread homelessness and housing insecurity.
Brown, a Democrat, said the legislation will provide “some immediate relief to Oregonians struggling to keep up with rising rents and a tight rental market.”
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.
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.
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.
The issue of rent stabilization at Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park could be decided by St. Helena voters as early as June.
The City Council directed staff Tuesday to come back with a resolution calling a special election at the earliest possible date, which staff said would be June 4.
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.
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.
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.
CHICO, Calif. — The Paradise Town Council met in the Chico City Council chambers on Wednesday night, to discuss Paradise’s post-Camp Fire housing shortage.
FEMA may be putting trailers on private property in Paradise, to temporarily solve the housing crisis. Manufactured homes on private parcels already make up 14-percent of single family residences, in Paradise.
But, what FEMA is proposing is slightly different.
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.
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.
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.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says conversations are underway on rent stabilization, after voters rejected a rent control ballot measure last fall.
Newsom spoke Tuesday in San Jose at a roundtable discussion on California’s housing crisis, saying the state is speaking with housing industry groups about possible next steps following the defeat of Proposition 10 in November.
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.
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.
A hard-fought and controversial campaign to expand rent control in California, home to some of the priciest housing markets in the nation, was defeated Tuesday night.
Proposition 10, the measure to broaden rent control’s reach by repealing a state law restricting its use, trailed throughout the night as it was soundly rejected by the state’s voters.
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.
For some of California’s largest real estate investors, the fight over an initiative to expand rent control goes beyond the state’s borders. They’ve opened their wallets to prove it.
Eight of California’s top owners of apartment buildings and their related business entities have donated nearly half of the $74 million raised to defeat Proposition 10, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of state campaign finance data.
Most economists argue that rent control will lead to a reduction in the quality and quantity of housing available. Yet frustration over rising rents seems to be boiling over in California and both sides promote research that they say proves their point.
The Union-Tribune is answering the most common questions about Prop 10 and what it means.
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.
By: DONALD WITTMAN and JESSE CUNHAOctober 19, 2018
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.
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?
Coming to an election near you in 2020: the future of Proposition 13, California’s landmark law limiting property taxes.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced Monday that an initiative to scale back the protections for commercial and industrial properties is eligible for the November 2020 ballot. The proponents, led by a coalition of civil rights groups and community organizations, could still decide before then not to move forward with the measure.
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.
California voters will decide on Nov. 6 whether government rent controls would make housing more affordable or even more expensive. Controlling rent hikes would help keep tenants under shelter and off the street. At least that’s the theory.
But controls also could drive up rent prices by reducing housing supply in several ways, it’s contended.
The main reason for California’s affordable housing shortage is simple: too much demand and not enough supply. Prop. 10 does nothing to address that disparity and indeed could make it worse.
For that reason and others, we urge you to vote no on Proposition 10.
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.
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.”
But critics of such strict rent control, including most economists, argue it will stymie housing development, worsening the state’s already severe housing shortage. Some landlords, they say, will simply sell their properties if it becomes far less profitable to rent them — as many did in Berkeley and Santa Monica decades ago.
A November ballot initiative that would allow cities to enact strong rent control across California is widely unpopular, even among renters, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California poll.
Roughly half of likely voters — 48 percent — oppose Proposition 10, according to the poll — the first conducted on the measure. Just 36 percent are in favor and 16 percent are undecided, the poll found.
A fight over rent control has raged for three years in the Silicon Valley suburb of Mountain View with no end in sight.
It began in October 2015, when Mountain View City Council members rejected pleas from tenant activists to limit rent increases. Tenant groups responded with a November 2016 ballot initiative to restrict rent hikes, and council members countered by putting a less stringent proposal before voters.
Many have long held the assumption that mobile homes don’t increase in value — or, at the very least, they rise in value at a much slower rate than traditional homes.
But recent data suggests the opposite is true — and that could have major implications in the push for increased affordable housing nationwide.
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.
This November, Californians will have the chance to go to the polls and vote on a whole slew of issues including who will be selected to lead our state as our next governor, whether to keep or repeal a recently enacted gas tax, or whether it makes sense to keep or eliminate daylight savings. Unfortunately, there is another proposition on the ballot, Proposition 10, that if passed will have profoundly negative effects on California’s economy, our housing industry, including the manufactured housing industry, renters, and apartment owners both large and small.
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.
SANTA CRUZ >> When mobile-home owners get into a dispute with the park owners from whom they rent their lot, their only real recourse is to hire an attorney and take the property owner to court.
State law gives the residents a number of rights — on paper — but there is no active enforcement and many elderly and low-income residents can’t afford the legal fees to make their case, advocates say. Instead, they are left at risk of negligence or unequal treatment on the part of park owners.
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.
BY: CAYLYN WRIGHT AND JIM LOFGRENSeptember 03, 2018
For months, the city of Sacramento has been in the throes of a heated debate over the city’s affordable housing problem, its root cause and potential solutions – highlighted by two workshops arranged by the mayor.
At an initial session held Aug. 14, there was general agreement that the root cause is a lack of supply. There also was consensus about the remedy: Build more units, and faster, through new funding sources and incentives to attract private-sector investment.
A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge this week rejected arguments by Mountain View mobile home tenants that they should also be covered under the city’s rent control program.
In his decision, Judge Mark Pierce upheld a February vote by the city’s Rental Housing Committee to not protect mobile homes under the city’s Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act (CSFRA).
Manufactured housing is the least expensive type of housing. So, considering the severe shortage of affordable housing in the US, why is the annual production of new manufactured housing so low?
Manufactured housing is 35 to 47 percent cheaper per square foot than new or existing site-built housing, yet the number of manufactured homes shipped each year has gone from averaging 242,000 per year between 1977 and 1993 to just 92,500 units in 2017.
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.
While others walked away from manufactured homes, Don Glisson Jr. stuck around.
He’s seen the industry’s ups and downs in his 36 years working at Triad Financial Services, the third-biggest lender to buyers of factory-made houses in the U.S. The rock-bottom was in the early 2000s, when rival firms were getting fat on subprime loans.
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.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday moved to impose temporary rent caps on mobile homes. The vote comes amid a broader, controversial push to remove barriers to rent control across California in response to rising housing costs.
In a 3-1 vote, supervisors approved temporary caps on so-called space rents — the price park owners charge residents to keep their homes on the premises. The ordinance, which will come back for final approval next month, would be in effect for 180 days and limit rent increases to 3% a year for leases of 12 months and less.
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.
Once an overlooked sector in the housing market, manufactured or “mobile” home REITs have become one of Wall Street’s quietest moneymakers.
These communities, often referred to as trailer parks, have evolved beyond the negative stigma that plagued them in the past, with many resembling high-end gated neighborhoods today. The manufactured-home market is benefiting from high demand from residents in search of more affordable workforce housing options.
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.
Members of the City Council want the city to conduct more study and public outreach before deciding whether to pursue a rent stabilization ordinance that would affect Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park.
The council told staff to arrange informational meetings at the park and delve into the various legal and technical questions that would be involved in crafting an ordinance to bring rent control to St. Helena’s only mobile home park.
For sale signs are cropping up throughout the Driftwood Mobile Home Park in Westminster since notices starting going out in late June announcing rent increases as high as $300 a month.
For many, that’s an increase of 30 percent to 40 percent, more than many longtime residents at this senior park of tidy, lushly landscaped mobile homes can afford. Many here protest they’re on fixed incomes and will have to move if the increases take effect.
Sacramento faces a serious affordable housing problem. The Bee editorial board calls on the mayor, city council, developers and SEIU-backed tenants’ organizations to set aside their differences and forge a compromise that takes aggressive action (“The mayor has a plan to fix the housing crisis. Now he needs help,” Editorials, July 16).
We agree. That’s why our coalition, Citizens for Affordable Housing, is committed to finding fair and common-sense answers.
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.
In response to rising housing costs, activists across Southern California have pushed for rent control.
Efforts have been made this year in cities like Inglewood, Long Beach, Pasadena and Pomona to put rent control measures on the ballot.
After all, what could a more straightforward way of dealing with rising housing costs than having the government pass laws to limit rising housing costs?
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.
Voters in Pasadena, Long Beach, and Inglewood won’t get a chance to vote in November on whether to adopt rent control policies in those cities.
Supporters of ballot initiatives calling for rent control in all three cities did not garner enough valid signatures to qualify the measures for the fall election.
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.
California voters will decide in November whether to give cities and counties new freedom to expand the use of rent control after an initiative backed by tenant groups earned a spot Friday on this fall’s ballot.
The initiative would repeal a decades-old state law that prevents local governments from passing most new rent control laws.
Bet you didn’t know California has 517,173 mobile homes.
While I was reviewing Census Bureau data on housing, a curious data point popped up: Only three states had more mobile homes than California. But as the nation’s most populous state, it’s another affordable-housing metric where California trails the pack: pre-fabricated homes are a tiny share of our residential-living supply — 3.7 percent vs. 6.6 percent in the rest of the nation.
Long Beach activists didn’t make their due date to get a rent control initiative before city voters on the November ballot, but they still have a shot to qualify for a subsequent election.
“We’re still going to be out there regularly,” Housing Long Beach community organizer Jordan Wynne said.
The crisis caused by the rising cost of housing in California has a solution: Build more housing.
People can debate where or what type of housing should be built, but there can be no doubt that more housing is needed. That’s why it’s so troubling that a measure headed for the November ballot would cause less housing to be built.
SACRAMENTO — “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,” opined Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck. He’s right on target given that rent control destroys housing markets because it takes away the incentive to build new apartments, reduces the willingness of landlords to upgrade and maintain their properties, and encourages tenants to squat indefinitely in their below-market units.
The latest turn in the long-running legal feud over a Carson law limiting rent increases at mobile home parks went in the city’s favor with a court ruling that could bolster cities’ abilities to regulate real estate up and down California.
SANTA CRUZ — Many people in the Seabright neighborhood knew about the roiling local debate over rent control even before Zav Hershfield, petition in hand, knocked on their doors.
Canvassers for renter rights have been through parks, neighborhoods and local shopping centers since February in this coastal town, collecting signatures to place a city referendum on the November ballot limiting annual rent increases and make it harder to evict residents.
The Coalition for Responsible Housing shares the dismay of the Sacramento Bee editorial board about the continued failure to meaningfully address California’s housing crisis (“Compromise on housing or face rent control,” April 19).
California voters this year will likely decide whether cities across the state should have more power to enact stronger rent control.
Rent control proponents behind a proposed November ballot initiative that would allow cities and counties to pass strong rent control laws say they now have enough signatures to qualify the measure.
“People understand that rents are out of control, that’s why I think you’re seeing this initiative move forward,” said Damien Goodmon, director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s “Housing is a Human Right” campaign.
SACRAMENTO — A renters’ revolt in California could be heading to the November ballot as a campaign to lift decades-old restrictions on rent control reported Friday it had gathered more than enough signatures to qualify.
Organizers are planning rallies in Sacramento, Oakland and Los Angeles on Monday as they hand in the signatures, which must be counted and verified by election officials before the initiative makes it on the ballot.
After cropping up in the early 2000s, the debate around rent stabilitzation in mobile home parks has resurfaced in El Dorado County.
On Tuesday, at the request of District 3 Supervisor Brian Veerkamp, the Board of Supervisors reviewed the possibility of a rent stabilization ordinance, which would restrict the frequency of rent hikes and the amount per increase in mobile home parks within unincorporated areas of the county.
Major changes to Mountain View’s rent control law could go before Mountain View voters this fall.
The political action group Measure V Too Costly filed paperwork on Friday, March 30, for a November ballot initiative that would heavily modify Mountain View’s rent control program. The proposal, dubbed the ”Mountain View Homeowner, Renter, and Taxpayer Protection Initiative,” seeks to curtail most limits on rent increases and create income eligibility requirements for tenants.
Mountain View’s Rental Housing Committee could soon be headed back to the courtroom over a decision to exclude tenants at mobile home parks from the city’s rent control protections.
Earlier this month, an attorney representing two mobile home residents at Santiago Villa issued a demand letter urging the committee to reverse its decision not to extend rent control to Mountain View’s 1,100 mobile homes. If the committee refused, the residents would file a lawsuit to get the action rescinded, said attorney Armen Nercessian of the firm Fenwick & West.
Clipboards in hand, signature-gatherers are fanning out across four Southern California cities this month, turning up at supermarkets and metro stops and apartment complexes to pitch a measure for the November ballot that they say will be salvation for renters.
But for landlords, their pitch is blasphemy.
At issue is whether the cities of Long Beach, Inglewood, Glendale and Pasadena should join a tiny band of California cities that already have rent control and “just cause” eviction laws that prevent landlords from ousting tenants in good standing.
SACRAMENTO - Register Your Mobilehome California, a new state program that provides waivers for past-due registration fees and taxes for mobilehomes and manufactured homes, has saved homeowners more than $500,000 in its first year of operation.
Besides the savings in fees and taxes, homeowners who have taken advantage of the program will also see additional benefits. They are now properly positioned to legally sell or transfer their property, apply for fire and flood insurance, and receive financial assistance and rebates from utility providers.
Delaine Eastin is the only major candidate for California governor to unequivocally support a potential November ballot measure that would allow stronger local rent control laws across the state.
Eastin, a Democrat and former state schools chief, said she supports the outright repeal of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which prevents rent control ordinances from applying to housing built after 1995, as well as single-family homes, duplexes and condos.
Residents from the Wagon Wheel and Valley Oaks mobile home parks are mobilizing to address the Willits City Council tonight, asking city officials to adopt a rent stabilization ordinance after an out of the area property management company’s acquisition of the properties led to rent increases and reported intimidation tactics against the elderly and low income tenants last summer.
Mountain View’s Rental Housing Committee on Monday night reaffirmed its opposition to expanding the city’s rent control program to include mobile homes. As a result, mobile home residents warned that they would seek legal action against the city to overturn the decision.
SACRAMENTO — A ballot initiative to lift California’s statewide restrictions on rent control has hit a key milestone, with 25 percent of the signatures it needs to qualify for the November ballot, the California Secretary of State’s office confirmed.
Organizers vowed to take their fight directly to the voters after a bill to repeal the restrictions died in its first committee hearing this year at a raucous January meeting attended by over 1,000 people on both sides of the contentious issue.
In what they called another step to prevent evictions and homelessness, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to draft an ordinance that, if passed, will control rents from rising at mobile home parks.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moved forward Tuesday with a plan to establish rent controls at mobile home parks in unincorporated areas.
The approved motion, written by Supervisors Janice Hahn and Sheila Kuehl, gives county departments six months to amend the county code and cap annual rent increases.
The fire-ravaged Journey’s End mobile home park will not reopen, but its owner is seeking to partner with a developer to build an apartment complex on the north Santa Rosa property, residents learned this weekend.
The family that owns the 13.5-acre site at Mendocino Avenue and Fountaingrove Parkway is working with nonprofit Burbank Housing to explore the feasibility of redeveloping the property into a mixture of affordable and market-rate apartments, Burbank chief executive officer Larry Florin said Sunday.
It has been a liberal dream for decades to undo parts or all of Proposition 13, the seminal California initiative limiting the property tax rate.
Is that fight finally coming to the ballot box this fall? A coalition of civil rights and community organizations is expected to begin collecting signatures later this month for a measure to tax commercial properties at market value while leaving in place the Proposition 13 protections for homeowners, a concept known as “split roll.”
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