California MHP News

Thu, Oct 27, 2022 – Mobile home values are rising at a rate nearly as fast as that of single-family homes, according to a study released earlier this month by online loan platform LendingTree.

Across the country, the median values of mobile homes increased 34.6% on average between 2016 and 2021, compared to 35.4% for single-family homes, based on a LendingTree analysis of U.S. Census data.

But climbing values are where the similarities stop.

Tue, Oct 25, 2022 – The maddening documentary A Decent Home highlights a cross-section of mobile home-owners and the system that aims to ruin them.

Urgent as it may be, the affordable housing crisis is a term that can make one’s eyes glaze over. News coverage of how Americans who don’t belong to the 1% are being squeezed out of the housing market tends to lean on data and reports, statistics and graphs. A Decent Home, Sara Terry’s unflinchingly intimate and troubling documentary about the crisis that is roiling the nation, tells this ever-pervasive story on a refreshingly human scale.

Terry spent six years working on her film, which follows bands of residents at a quartet of mobile home parks under threat by developers looking to jack up rents – sometimes by more than 50% – or repurpose the land for more lucrative use. Moving a mobile home can cost up to $20,000, which makes it easier for landlords to get away with inflicting steep rent hikes. I guarantee you, they’re not going to move if they can avoid it. The feeling was: they’re just going to go down to the local Walmart and get a few more hours of work, Terry said to the Guardian. It’s very hard to put a face on greed, but that was my aim.

A Decent Home was inspired by a 2015 Guardian article detailing how investment firms were coming after trailer parks, one of the nation’s last remaining reliable sources of affordable housing. Mobile home owners typically purchase their homes but unlike other homeowners, they must pay rent on the land where they live. Meanwhile, they enjoy protections far less robust than those of typical apartment dwellers. This fact has become all the more evident over the last decade, when a surge of financiers have been scooping mom-and-pop properties and rewriting the rules, declaring how homes must look and issuing unmanageable rent increases. Terry’s film charts its subjects’ different ways of fighting back. Spoiler alert: There are few victories.

Sat, Oct 22, 2022 – Mobile homes represent one of the few affordable housing options remaining for many. In most cases, residents purchase the home, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional house, and then rent the land underneath from a park owner.

Santa Rosa has 16 rent-controlled mobile home parks with 2,155 spaces, plus a couple subdivisions where residents own their lots. Base rents range roughly from just under $500 to $1,600 per month.

Across California, 104 cities and counties have some form of rent stabilization rules, with yearly increases mostly tied to a percentage of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the measure of prices for goods and services paid by consumers in an area.

And that’s the heart of the issue for Santa Rosa mobile home residents fighting to amend the city’s rent ordinance, which currently allows for rent hikes equal to 100% of the San Francisco area CPI with a 6% cap. This year, that’s 5.7%.

Fri, Oct 21, 2022 – California Health and Safety Code section 18400.3 requires HCD to convene a task force of representatives of mobilehome owners, mobilehome park operators, local enforcement agencies that conduct mobilehome park inspections, and the Legislature, every six months, to provide input to HCD on the conduct and operation of the mobilehome park maintenance inspection program.

Friday, October 21, 2022 Task Force Meeting

• Meeting Agenda (PDF)
• MPM Briefing Document (PDF)
• MRLPP Report: July 2020 through June 2022 (PDF)

Wed, Oct 19, 2022 – Request for City Council Action: This staff report asks Council to approve a professional services agreement with RSG Inc. for research related to a Rent Stabilization program for Mobile Home Parks. RSG Inc., a consultant with specialized experience in rent stabilization, will assist staff in obtaining, documenting, and analyzing market data to pursue a study of legal findings required to enact a mobile home rent stabilization ordinance.

Several years ago, a few local mobile home parks were sold to new owners who implemented space rent increases shortly after the purchase. For many of Corona’s mobile home residents, the rent increase created financial hardships. At the request of a group of mobile home residents, the City Council tasked staff with researching the feasibility of mobile home rent control to mitigate the financial hardship of the mobile home residents.

On April 26, 2017, a City Council Study Session was held to discuss options for potential mobile home rent control regulations. The City Council opted against moving forward with local rent control regulations at that time. Nevertheless, a couple of Council Members mediated an agreement between residents and owners of the Corona La Linda Mobile Home Park to stabilize rents for all existing residents who agreed to sign a long-term lease.

Earlier this year, resident of Corona La Linda resumed their petition for rent stabilization. They met with Council Members and with staff in early June. In response, staff was directed to prepare a staff report for further discussion at the June 15, 2022 Council meeting. In furtherance of the Council’s direction, a request for proposal was prepared to commission the services of a consulting firm specializing in rent stabilization analysis, planning, and implementation.

Sat, Oct 15, 2022 – Texas-based RealPage’s YieldStar software helps landlords set prices for apartments across the U.S. With rents soaring, critics are concerned that the company’s proprietary algorithm is hurting competition.

On a summer day last year, a group of real estate tech executives gathered at a conference hall in Nashville to boast about one of their company’s signature products: software that uses a mysterious algorithm to help landlords push the highest possible rents on tenants.

For tenants, the system upends the practice of negotiating with apartment building staff. RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money.

The software’s design and growing reach have raised questions among real estate and legal experts about whether RealPage has birthed a new kind of cartel that allows the nation’s largest landlords to indirectly coordinate pricing, potentially in violation of federal law.

Tue, Oct 11, 2022 – Home prices are starting to come down in some parts of the U.S., but that doesn’t change that buying a single-family house remains steep. Because of this, some would-be buyers may consider cheaper alternatives to traditional single-family homes, like less expensive condos or townhouses, while others may think about mobile homes.

But are mobile homes that much more affordable than single-family houses, and do they appreciate in value in the same way? To answer these questions and determine where mobile homes are the least and most expensive, LendingTree analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey to compare the median value of mobile homes and single-family homes in each of the nation’s states, except for Hawaii (see the methodology for why Hawaii was excluded).

We found that mobile homes are generally far less expensive than their single-family counterparts. We also found that mobile home values nationwide appreciated in value almost as quickly as single-family homes over the five years from 2016 to 2021.

Thu, Oct 6, 2022 – The Imperial Beach City Council pressed ahead Wednesday with rental protections intended to help the residents of Miramar Imperial Beach Mobile Home and RV Park who’ve been complaining about living conditions and a policy requiring they move out every six months.

The ordinance, approved unanimously with one member absent, includes an eviction moratorium and no more than 5 percent annual rent increase. Though mobile home and RV park regulations typically fall under state jurisdiction, elected officials said they were motivated by a sense of urgency, so that many of the residents don’t end up on the streets.

Several speakers at the meeting who were sympathetic to the park owners warned that the ordinance would trigger legal action, arguing that officials were overstepping their authority.

After a representative from the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association argued that the city hadn’t provided evidence of rising rents and evictions, one of the residents, Connie Villapando, showed off a copy of her five-day notice to leave. Other residents spoke of an open sewer that had been repaired with tape and a trash bag.

Alysson Snow, an attorney who’s representing several tenants pro-bono, also told the City Council that the park was engaging in unfair business practices by shuffling around people who weren’t causing a disturbance. Their real offense, she said, was standing up for their rights.