Santa Rosa seniors fight for stricter rent control at mobile home parks, the city’s last affordable housing

Last month, 80-year-old Joyce Amos got a startling notice: Come Jan. 1, she’ll see a 5.7% rent increase on the land under her mobile home.

Lonely after her husband died, Amos moved from Hayward to the Country Mobile Home Park in Santa Rosa in 2013 where she found a home she loves and a community she cherishes. But, in the nine years she’s lived there, her rent has gone up more than 36%, stretching her fixed income to its limits.

“A few bills I’ve just stopped paying because I can't afford it,” Amos told me.

Sue Wilson, 85, is in a similar bind.

She and her husband purchased a mobile home in the park 12 years ago after realizing their Oakmont apartment rent would be unmanageable if something happened to one of them.

Wilson’s husband has since passed, and she relies entirely on Social Security and a bit from an IRA.

In February, for the first time since she’s lived in the park, her housing costs, thanks in part to skyrocketing utility prices, exceeded her Social Security.

“It just upset me,” Wilson said. “I just can’t have that happen again.”

Now, with the latest rent increase looming, she’s worried.

“I think it's going to hit me pretty darn hard,” she told me. She doesn’t have much wiggle room besides wearing triple layers this winter to keep the gas bill down.

“They're gonna price us outta here, and there's no place to go,” Amos told me.

Few options

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.

Different laws govern mobile homes from other housing, and rent control is a local control issue with no state limits.

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%.

For the mostly seniors who occupy these parks, that’s a problem. Twelve of Santa Rosa’s 16 parks are for ages 55 and older, and the majority, according to resident surveys, are heavily dependent on a fixed income.

Even with the 8.7% cost of living adjustment bump announced for 2023, the highest in 40 years to account for record inflation, Social Security payments have failed to keep pace with CPI over the years. Cost of living adjustments have exceeded the CPI increase in only eight of the past 22 years.

To Tom LaPenna, 75, president of Santa Rosa Manufactured-Homeowners Association, and a resident at Sequoia Gardens Mobile Home Park, the easiest solution is to adjust Santa Rosa’s ordinance to a lower percentage of CPI, as many other jurisdictions have done.

The last time the law, first set in 1993, was updated was 2004.

“We should have done this years ago,” LaPenna said. “It’s past due.”

He and other advocates are pushing for 50% of CPI with a 3% cap, arguing that Santa Rosa shouldn’t be tied to San Francisco’s very different economy. He pointed out that even San Francisco uses 60% of its CPI in calculating rent increase limits.

Greg O’Hagan, who represents owners of the Rancho San Miguel Mobile Home Park, noted that despite the 5.7% rent increase for 2023, the average yearly increase over the past 22 years is a much lower 2.75%.

“This is an average over time,” O’Hagan said. “That's the way an ordinance needs to be looked at; not one snapshot in time.”

Behind the average, though, are years like 2014 to 2017, where Social Security went up a collective 4% versus CPI’s 11.7%, which can set some residents back.

“It's constantly catch-up, catch-up, catch-up, but you never catch-up,” said Jo Ann Jones, 74, another resident of The Country Mobile Home Park.

“For those seniors that are living on a fixed income, every adjustment to CPI that isn't met by an equal adjustment from Social Security risks pushing them out onto the streets,” Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Rogers told me.

He said he supports a change to the ordinance.

“Obviously everybody is feeling the pinch of inflation, but those folks living in those parks really are a paycheck away from being on the street. That's the context within which we’re talking about this,” Rogers said.

Mobile home park residents have lobbied for changes to the rent ordinance at various points since it was last set 18 years ago.

The latest push that started in 2019 was stalled by the pandemic, but residents have ramped-up efforts, gathering data and pressuring city officials, as the squeeze of inflation brings even more urgency to the issue.

Over the past few months, the city has been facilitating meetings with resident and park owner representatives. The two groups could come to an agreement, or ultimately, the City Council will decide on what to do about the ordinance, likely by the end of November.

According to notes on owner feedback at a city meeting in August, park management representatives said the residents’ proposal is “not financially viable.”

Instead, O’Hagan, who has been part of the negotiations, said his park is willing to put funds into a rental assistance program.

“We have an ownership group that wants to help those who need help,” he told me.

A few meetings in, LaPenna, who’s committed to a more systemic fix, isn’t feeling too hopeful about a compromise with park owners. He’s more optimistic when it comes to the City Council.

“I really think the city wants to do the right thing,” he said.

A broader movement and debate

These Santa Rosa residents aren’t alone in their efforts.

Windsor could soon see amendments to its rent ordinance after mobile homeowners pushed for a similar change during a hearing on the city’s housing element plan, required affordable housing plans submitted to the state every eight years.

Petaluma, too, is considering changes to its mobile home rent law that also uses 100% CPI as its metric.

In November 2021, the new owner of the Youngstown Mobile Home Park proposed a 40% rent increase, triggering an arbitration under the local ordinance. An arbitrator ruled in residents’ favor in February.

While the owner said the move was necessary to cover rising expenses, an expert calculated the park was still poised to turn a profit of more than $500,000 for the year.

LaPenna is hoping for a ripple effect. “The county could be next,” he told me.

Sonoma County is expected to release its own housing plan element draft in late October. It’s yet to be seen if or how past discussions about mobile homeowner protections will factor into its equation.

As the country wrestles with its nationwide housing crisis, the spotlight has turned toward mobile homes. They’re perceived by many as a last bastion of affordable housing that could also be jeopardized, especially as real estate investment and private equity firms increasingly snap up parks and raise rents.

“For five decades, mobile home parks have outperformed other real estate sectors...Mobile home parks increased in value by 12% when a majority of other real estate asset classes went down in value during COVID-19,” Midwest Park Capital, a private real estate investment firm, said in a 2021 post.

“Demand for mobile home parks, which are the only affordable housing and non-subsidized option, actually increases as the economy tightens.”

Against this backdrop, well-organized residents and concerned officials have successfully pushed through some laws to limit rent increases and close loopholes that could affect affordability.

California legislation, AB 2782, passed in 2020, ended a provision that exempted residents with long-term leases from local rent control and required owners looking to close or change the use of a mobile park to provide adequate relocation or compensation plans for residents.

Three bills signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, including one co-authored by state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, address park manager training, restrict rent control exemptions and expand resident access to meetings with park owners.

O’Hagan maintained that with the increasingly expensive upkeep for predominantly 50-plus-year-old parks, among other costs, “it’s not even about profits. To maintain a park, expenses are always going to go up,” he told me.

When it comes to sustaining parks long-term, “restricting rents only accelerates the time when we’re on a collision course.”

But, for many park residents, that collision point is already here.

Older adults are California’s fastest growing homeless population. In Sonoma County’s 2022 point-in-time homeless report, 43% of survey respondents were over 50 years old, compared to 29% in 2017.

If a rent hike, or sky-high utility bill or other park fee tips a mobile homeowner over the edge, they have few choices.

Mobile homes, more accurately called manufactured homes, are hardly mobile, costing thousands of dollars to move if owners can even find another location. What’s left is to keep slipping into debt or sell the home they’ve invested in, knowing other affordable housing alternatives are slim to none.

“There’s not anything out there other than this,” Jones said.

“In Your Corner” is a new column that puts watchdog reporting to work for the community. If you have a concern, a tip, or a hunch, you can reach “In Your Corner” Columnist Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @InYourCornerTPD and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.