Carson OKs overlay district to protect mobile home parks, residents
Carson will create a mobile home park overlay district, adding an extra layer of protection to preserve what some residents have called their last bastion of affordable housing options.
The City Council approved the overlay district this week.
Essentially, only mobile home parks will be allowed in the district. If property owners within the area want to redevelop a piece of land on which a mobile home park sits, they will have to apply for and receive a zoning change from the city and provide a comparable number of affordable housing units for the residents there.
There are 21 mobile home parks in Carson. They “constitute a significant proportion of the lowand moderate-income housing in the city,” according to a staff report.
“The City Council wants to put a zone in place, an overlay zone, so if there's a park owner that wants to close the park, from a land-use perspective, (the council) will have more discretion,” City Attorney Sunny Soltani said.
Carson has one of the most stringent mobile home rent control laws in the state, according to a staff report. This has resulted in a lengthy series of lawsuits with mobile home park owners who wanted to capitalize on their investments by increasing rents or converting their land uses to get around state and local rent control laws.
The city's latest legal contender was the owner of Rancho Dominguez, a 5.74-acre, 81-space all-age community mobile home park in an industrial area. The property owner had wanted to close the park and develop it into apartments.
The city won the lawsuit, allowing the mobile home park to remain open, but when the property owner asked to close the park, Carson was limited in its ability to help the residents, Soltani said.
“With Rancho Dominguez, when they came to close the park, we couldn't stop it,” Soltani said. “We couldn't say, `You can't close the park.' The only thing we could do was to basically negotiate or put mitigation measures for relocation benefits.”
But an overlay district will change that.
“The city will have more discretion in protecting the residents and potentially even denying it,” Soltani said, “because a
city doesn't have to change its zoning. It has discretion whether it wants to change its zone or not.”
Unless the council OKs a zoning change, only mobile homes will be allowed in the overlay zone. Existing mobile home parks, though, could be renovated and expanded.
New mobile home parks
in the zone will need to get a conditional use permit to operate.
The only exceptions to the new rules were for Imperial Avalon, which had previously received approval to relocate, and Park Granada, which will close because of a bankruptcy court order, according to the city staff report.
Both mobile homes received city approval before the council approved its new general plan update on April 4, the staff report said.
The overlay district, meanwhile, will further the city's goal of protecting its supply of affordable homes, officials said during the council's Tuesday meeting.
“I believe that the park owners that want to take advantage of our residents need to get this message straight,” said Councilmember Jim Dear. “An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us. An injury to a resident who lives in a mobile home is an injury to everyone in the city.”