While the housing affordability crisis has given rise to calls for tenant protections and rent control across the state, one of the last strongholds of affordable home ownership – mobile homes- now has a bill in the state assembly aimed at providing more protection and legal recourse to those who own their own home, but rent the space their home occupies from the owner of the mobile home park.
The State Senate Judiciary Committee approved AB 3066 on June 26, authored by Assemblymember Mark Stone. It promises more support and nonprofit legal assistance to mobile home owners in disputes with mobile home park owners. The bill now goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for an evaluation of fiscal impact.
“The measure balances the relationship between mobile home owners and park owners by establishing a pilot program for assessing Mobile home Residency Law violations at the State Department of Housing and Community Development. Mobile home owners would have additional assistance resolving issues related to home sales, complaint responses, and charges leading to eviction,” according to a press release from Assemblymember Stone’s office.
In legal disputes with park owners, mobile home owners have no legal recourse except civil litigation, which can be prohibitively expensive and often results in claims getting dropped and illegal practices continuing. Under the proposed bill, a five-year pilot program will be created in the State’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to collect and evaluate complaints of violation of Mobile home Residency Law. According to the press release, under the pilot program established by AB 3066, “HCD would select the most severe violations to refer to legal aid nonprofits, which would then provide free or sliding scale assistance to mobile home owners in their pursuit of litigation.”
For people on fixed incomes, litigation without assistance is often too expensive and burdensome to resolve many violations, including serious violations that can negatively affect quality of life, Stone said in the press release.
Common violations of the Mobile Home Residency Law include selective and inconsistent enforcement of park rules, park owners violating their own “no subletting” rules by renting mobile homes they own, but not allowing homeowners to rent out their mobile homes, interference with home sales, attempts to prevent homeowners or homeowners associations from use of the clubhouse, failure of property management to keep posted office hours or respond to resident complaints, bullying or threatening behavior by property managers, as well as frivolous charges leading to eviction.
Catherine Borg, Legislative Advocate for the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, a professional trade association of mobile home park owners, explained why her organization opposes the bill.
“The proposed bill does not provide any notification to the park owner of the problem, nor does it give the park owner an opportunity to cure the alleged violation before it is turned over to legal aid organizations,” Borg said.
Last year, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill written by Stone, AB 1269, that would have required the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to enforce Mobile Home Residency Law and provide mandatory dispute resolution between mobile home residents and park owners. Governor Brown indicated in his veto message that, while he considered the bill “well-intentioned”, an inadequate fee structure to support the additional workload was a key reason for his veto.
The current bill proposes to assess the management of mobile home parks an annual registration fee of $10 for each mobile home lot in a mobile home park, and allows this fee to be passed on to the mobile home owners. Pursuant to the proposed bill, this fee will be deposited into the Mobile home Dispute Resolution Fund, under the administration of the State HCD.
According to Borg, the cost of this pilot program is excessive. There are approximately 365,000 mobile home lots throughout the state, which will result in revenues paid into the Mobile home Dispute Resolution Fund of more than $3.6 million at $10 per lot for the proposed pilot program.
Currently, there is an online “Mobile home Assistance Center” at the state HCD website, with a “Hotline” link for complaints about violations of Mobile home Residency Law. This “hotline” receives about 100 complaints each month from around the state. That equals about 1,200 complaints per year, with no data on how many complaints are frivolous or how many get resolved without any action taken. That number of complaints compared to revenue collected equals about $3,000 per complaint, according to Borg.
The City of Scotts Valley Housing Element, 2009-2014, based on 2000 Census data, reports that there are 817 mobile homes in Scotts Valley, accounting for fully 17 percent of the city’s housing stock. The County of Santa Cruz, Mobile and Manufactured Home Commission lists a total of 955 mobile home spaces in 14 mobile home parks in District 5, which includes both the San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley.
