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Mobile home park residents seek repeal of El Monte ordinance banning rent control

By Maritza Velazquez
twitter.com/MaritzaSGVN

Posted:   08/06/2012 09:02:49 PM PDT

Sandi Witt in front of her mobile home along with other residents have complained about the conditions and high rent for years and now have a chance to reverse a city ordinance that would allow the city to be involved at the Brookside Mobile Home Park on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012 in El Monte, Calif. (SGVN/Staff Photo by Keith Birmingham)

EL MONTE - The City Council has approved a November ballot measure that would allow El Monte to enact rent control regulations on the city's 33 mobile home parks.
That option has been off limits due to a 1990 voter-approved ordinance titled "The Mobilehome Tenant Rent Assistance Program."
While it provided a 10 percent rental discount for low-income seniors, the ordinance also included a clause essentially barring the city from imposing rent control regulations on mobile home park landowners in El Monte.
A majority vote by residents on Nov. 6 would repeal that ordinance.
The City Council could then chose to introduce an ordinance on rent control, requiring the approval of a majority of councilmembers.
The issue was sparked by residents of the Brookside Mobile Country Club, 12700 Elliot Ave., who say they're desperate for reprieve from skyrocketing rents and poor park maintenance.
Since Councilwoman Norma Macias found out about the problems at Brookside last year, she's been pushing to do something about it.
"I think if we can put this measure on the ballot and hopefully bring some justice to these people, we can certainly try to help them," Macias said.
Although a rent control ordinance could be in the future for El Monte's mobile home parks, some opponents say it's not the best way to go about keeping prices fair.
Generally, these ordinances - like one La Verne has in place - limit the amount
that property owners can hike rents. In many cases, that limit is set by the Consumer Price Index. "Rent control is incredibly bad policy and that's why years have gone by and no cities in California have passed it," said David Evans, senior regional representative of the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association.
It pits residents against owners and unfairly favors residents, Evans said. The ordinances also pose high administrative costs for cities to administer, he said.
Rent control was popular in the 1970s and 80s, but many cities have done away with such policies, Evans said.
Approximately 21 percent of California's cities still have them in place, he said.
Several Brookside residents came before the City Council last week, painting a daunting picture of tenants caught in a precarious situation in which their monthly payments rise every year.
While some residents at Brookside pay more than $1,000, the average rent at El Monte's mobile home parks is $489 for a single-wide space and $557 for a double-wide space, according to a city survey in which 18 of 33 total park owners in the city responded.
Brookside did not respond to that survey, city officials said.
Representatives of Brookside's management company, Mobile Community Management did not respond directly to inquiries regarding resident complaints, instead providing a fact sheet.
According to that fact sheet, 90 percent of residents "have voluntarily elected over the years to sign long-term leases, which clearly specify rent levels and the method of calculating future annual rent increases for the term of the lease."
Monthly rent includes water and trash pick up, according to the response.
The management company is owned by Los Angeles-based Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group, which was involved in the passage of the 1990 ballot initiative, which also abolished a rent control ordinance that had been enacted in El Monte two years earlier, according to city officials.
While residents at mobile home parks own their coach, they lease the land that it sits on.
Among those Brookside residents is Sandi Witt, a 63-year-old woman who moved with her mother to the mobile home park four decades ago and has seen her monthly rent far exceed her income since the mid-1980s.
For example, in 2007 she paid around $782 a month for rent, according to a bill.
Currently, she pays more than $1,100 to rent her space while she only earns $875, Witt said.
If it wasn't for local food banks, she wouldn't eat, Witt said.
And those rent payments are going to rise again.
According to a notice Witt received last month, beginning in November her payments will be $1,191.23.
However, she can qualify for an "adjusted monthly rate" of $1,135.04 if she agrees to settle a lawsuit she and other residents have filed against Brookside's owners, according to the document.
She's not settling, Witt said.
"As it stands, with this rent increase, I'm probably going to be a 605 (freeway) bridge resident," she said.
Witt is part of a 2009 lawsuit filed by one-third of Brookside residents claiming the park's owners have failed to maintain the park, she said. Attorneys representing the group did not return phone calls seeking comment.
"The Park denies, and is vigorously defending against the allegations contained in the lawsuit," Brookside representatives said in its fact sheet.
More than half of the plantiffs in the lawsuit have moved or settled their claims with Brookside, according to the company.
Witt pointed to the collapsing embankment behind her trailer and said it's one more indication that the residents are not being taken care of despite the exorbitant rent they pay.
Another man who wished to remain anonymous pointed out large cracks in the pavement that had unsuccessfully been covered in slurry seal.
However, two workers nearby cleaned one of many empty lots in the park. And at the clubhouse, one woman mopped near the front door, which faced a well-manicured grassy area featuring a playground slide.
According to online advertisements, the rent at some mobile home parks in areas like Pomona, Palmdale and Oakland run about $500. One in Huntington Beach is advertised at $1,495. Another in Brea shows monthly rent at $975.
Although Brookside tenants said they'd like to move out, they can't afford it.
It can cost thousands to move a trailer from one lot to another.
"It would take all my money to move," one resident said. "So you just have to walk away."
The owners of Brookside - Tatum-Kaplan and their management company Mobile Community Management - have faced multiple lawsuits in Orange and San Bernardino counties from mobile home park residents complaining of much of the same issues alleged at Brookside.
Jeffrey Kaplan, a lawyer who heavily invested in the mobile-home business in the 1980s, owns more than a dozen mobile-home parks in Southern California, according to archives from the California Secretary of State's office.
In 1996, Kaplan led an unsuccessful state initiative similar to El Monte's 1990 ordinance that would have done away with rent controls for California's mobile home parks.
"It's just been very frustrating for me to not have been able to really do really for these residents," Macias said.
maritza.velazquez@sgvn.com
626-962-8811, ext. 2236



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