Council Considers Moratorium on Mobile Home Rent Increases

MOORPARK — Prodded by complaints about steadily rising rents, the City Council may slap a five-month moratorium on rent increases at the city’s mobile home parks.

Under an ordinance the council will discuss Wednesday, park managers would not be able to raise rents for existing tenants--or hike the rent on a vacant space if a tenant moves out--until October. The freeze would give city officials time to create a rent mediation board that would rule on future increases.

The proposal comes two weeks after residents of Villa del Arroyo mobile home park in eastern Moorpark bombarded the council with complaints about increases that they say are squeezing their budgets and rendering their park unaffordable for prospective mobile home buyers.

“We need to have this urgency ordinance before we can get the rent mediation board in place,” said resident Alice Rowan, who has spearheaded efforts to stop the increases.

Both the proposed moratorium and the mediation board are necessary if the city hopes to keep mobile home parks affordable, Rowan said.

“There’s a lot of people who need an affordable place to live,” she said.

Moorpark already has an ordinance designed to stabilize rents at mobile home parks. The ordinance, which once provoked a lawsuit from 240-space Villa del Arroyo’s owner and later survived a citywide referendum on its fate, lets park owners raise rents by 4% each year--or by the consumer price index, whichever is higher.

Park residents complain that the current system gives management automatic annual increases. Instead, residents want park managers to have to justify proposed increases before receiving city approval.

Villa del Arroyo site managers declined to comment Monday on the moratorium. In a letter to the City Council two weeks ago, however, the management company that runs the park asked that the city leave the current rent stabilization ordinance unchanged.

The idea of a rent mediation board is not new.

Simi Valley already has one that settles disputes between mobile home park tenants and managers. However, the Simi board does not review requests to raise rents. Instead, it takes action only after tenants affected by a rent hike petition the board for a hearing.

In Moorpark, both the proposed mediation board and the moratorium would also affect the 28-space Moorpark Mobile Home Park, located near City Hall. But manager Don Phillips said he had no problem with the idea of justifying rent increases.

“It wouldn’t be a problem at all,” he said. “You have to show the improvements you need to make. You need to give the residents something for the rent they’re paying.”