SACRAMENTO — Voters will be asked March 26 to settle an ugly fight between landlords and mobile home park tenants over repealing local rent controls and outlawing any rent restrictions in the future.
At issue is Proposition 199, a relatively obscure initiative written and financed by park operators. They claim that a marketplace free of government controls would stimulate development of needed affordable housing and result in benefits for tenants due to increased competition.
But mobile home park tenants, mostly senior citizens and young families, claim that Proposition 199 would trigger waves of unprecedented rent-gouging that ultimately could drive them from their homes.
"People are extremely concerned about Proposition 199," said retiree Ron Laramie of Huntington Beach, a mobile home owner and activist in the campaign against the initiative.
Although rent controls traditionally provoke localized fights between park owners and tenants, this will be the first time such a proposal has faced voters statewide. Owners went to the initiative after years of losing battles in the Legislature.
Unlike apartment tenants, mobile home residents typically own their coaches and rent space from park operators. They say they cannot merely pack up and move when rents get too high because mobile homes--despite their names--are not very mobile.
Under the proposal, rent controls would be phased out gradually on a space-by-space basis when the mobile home was sold, vacated or its ownership transferred, a process that likely would take years.
The initiative also would require landlords to provide a 10% "rental assistance" discount to the poorest tenants who occupy 10% of the spaces after a park was removed from rent controls. Opponents charge that such a reduction would be meaningless for a tenant whose rent had already been substantially increased.
But the core economic issue, both sides agree, is the initiative's proposed ban on rent restrictions in the future by local or state governments.
"There is considerable interest in housing as an investment," said Dennis Wolcott, a spokesman for the Proposition 199 campaign organization Californians for Mobilehome Fairness. "The threat of rent control is keeping the lid on that money."
But the prospect of outlawing future rent controls has energized thousands of mobile home owners as never before, said Dave Hennessy, president of the 60,000-member Golden State Mobilehome Owners League, chief opponent of the proposition. He said mobile home owners outside rent control parks are especially opposed to it.
