City leaders question likelihood of mobile home rent control

Ballot initiative ‘clearest path forward,’ mayor says, though advocates are not going in that direction

MOUNTAIN VIEW » After the decisive defeat of a ballot measure that would have revised Mountain View’s rent control law, city leaders are questioning the viability of pursuing rent control protections for mobile home owners.

Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga told the Palo Alto Daily Post that the defeat of Measure D in the March 3 election exposes the city to legal challenges from mobile home park owners — who have taken the city to court in the past over rent control — and makes it “harder for the city to create a rent control law for mobile home owners.”

The controversial measure to change the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act — which was first passed in 2016 — was sponsored by the Mountain View City Council and touted by real estate groups and landlords in the city who felt current rent control rules were overly onerous and cutting into their profits.

Though many of the changes to the act were minor modifications with little material impact on renters, the measure did include more substantial changes allowing landlords to raise rents and pass costs on to tenants.

Mountain View’s current rent control law does not identify mobile homes as eligible for rent control, and two years ago, the Rental Housing Committee excluded the city’s 1,130 mobile home spaces in six parks from its protections.

On Jan. 28, dozens of people living in the mobile home parks told the City Council that their rents have skyrocketed year over year, threatening one of the largest stocks of affordable homes in Mountain View and Santa Clara County.

Now city staff have been tasked with studying the legal implications of a mobile home rent control law to determine potential next steps, such as a ballot initiative in the fall.

“That would probably be the

clearest path forward,” Abe-Koga said in an email.

But the Mountain View Mobile Home Alliance isn’t likely to start gathering the 5,500 signatures necessary to prepare a ballot initiative on the issue of mobile home rent control.

The task would be daunting for the city’s small mobile home community as advocates would have to reach the signature threshold by June, said former Mountain View Mayor Lenny Siegel.

And with a council long divided over the issue of rent control, activists and mobile home renters are not hopeful for a quick resolution from the council.

For Trey Bornmann, resident of the Santiago Villa mobile home park and president of the Mobile Home Alliance, Abe-Koga’s comments signal that the past two years of legal battles will continue without much help from the city “to protect some of our more vulnerable citizens.”

A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge in August 2018 rejected arguments by mobile home tenants like Bornmann that they also should be covered under the city’s rent control program.

In the decision, Judge Mark Pierce upheld the February 2018 vote by the

city’s Rental Housing Committee to exclude mobile homes.

Bornmann said he and others are waiting for a decision on their appeal, which is not likely to come for six months to a year.

Bornmann said De Anza Properties, owned by developer John Vidovich, has been hiking space rents at Santiago Villa and effectively lowering the overall equity of homes in the park and decreasing their market value.

Bornmann, who pays about $2,000 monthly to rent a space from Santiago Villa, said the effect of rising rents on mobile home owners means homes get ever cheaper in the park, at which point De Anza Properties offers to buy and rent them out individually.

In Mountain View, zoning for mobile home parks prohibits owners from simply changing land-use, so owners of the parks have the authority to close down but not to build anything else there. For that they would need city approval.

“Vidovich has the control to make the space rent go up and lower the value of the home, then buy it off from people,” Bornmann said. “This is why I really get involved.”

Neither Vidovich nor Santiago Villa responded to requests for comment.

Much to the surprise of many mobile home rent control advocates who opposed

Measure D, Vidovich and other mobile home park owners contributed nearly $300,000 to a “no on D” campaign, likely because the current rent control law gives them an advantage in already excluding mobile homes.

Siegel said he and his campaign had no contact with the organization sponsoring the other “no on D” campaign, and added that he “couldn’t believe” mobile home park owners would oppose the measure.

“I assume that their lawyers think Measure D would make it easier for Mountain View to regulate rents for mobile homes and mobile home parks,” Siegel said. “But I don’t believe that’s true.”

Activists suspect the current rent control measures, which exclude mobile homes, would have a better chance of being stalled in the courts than any new potential ordinance or action.

Siegel said the council could simply pass a new ordinance to specifically outline rent control protections for mobile home owners without including it in the city’s current law and forcing them to fight the Rental Housing Committee to overturn its 2018 decision excluding them.

“It’s a matter of politics,” Siegel said. “The original legal advice to the council was that mobile home were covered. When the council

put it on the ballot, I said it was covered. I’ve read through Measure V and I don’t see any problem including them. The fact they weren’t mentioned by name in the act doesn’t mean they aren’t housing units that would be covered by it.”

Councilwoman Alison Hicks said she anticipates the council will be able to craft a “solid mobile home

rent control solution” to protect a “very important piece of our affordable housing puzzle in Mountain View.”

“We’re at the beginning of the conversation at this point, so it would be hard for me to predict what path or paths the conversation will take,” Hicks said. “We have well over a thousand mobile homes; 85% of the people in them are seniors, mostly on fixed incomes and long-term Mountain View residents. Many bought those homes in an attempt to take responsibility for themselves in their senior years, rather than rely on the taxpayer. The city simply has to preserve these affordable housing units. We cannot afford to replace them.”