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A California appeals court has shot down a lawsuit from two Mountain View residents who argued that the city’s rent control law should apply to mobile homes.
Mariel Bolhouse and Tim Larson, renters at the Santiago Villa mobile home park in Mountain View, sued the city’s Rental Housing Committee in March 2018 over the …
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If you live in a mobile home, you might re-examine your life’s priorities. For what you’re paying here, you can move into a luxurious home in another part of the country. And now many jobs are portable — you can live where ever you want.
No excuse now for council to impose rent control on mobile home parks.
Who funded these tenants’ lawsuit anyway? If they’re worried about their rent in a mobile home park, it’s clear they didn’t have the money to pay these lawyers.
If rent control were imposed on mobile home parks, the landlords will evict the tenants, have them remove their trailer homes and sell the land to a developer. A developer can provide a better rate of return from an office building than what the landlord would get from mobile home residents, that’s for sure.
Mostly rhetorical comments above. A hundred cities and counties in California have rent control at mobile home parks. The MV City Council could enact such an ordinance and/or put a proposed charter amendment with such rent control on the city ballot. The lawyers who sued obviously worked for free – with the hope of being awarded fees if they won. Mobile home parks in most places are specially zoned. Park owners cannot legally tear them down and sell to developers for other uses – unless they are own enough politicians as well.
Rents in mobile parks are sky-high! I can barely afford tattoos any more.
Gary, mobile home park owners sometimes decide to sell to developers despite what you claim. You might remember a few years ago when the family who owned the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park decided to take a $40 million offer from San Mateo developer Promethius. There was little the city could do to stop the sale. Supervisor Joe Simitian had to step in and counter Promethius’ offer. That led to the family selling the park to the county. But that’s not going to happen every time. For one thing the county doesn’t have that kind of money laying around. If you ask me, if the city imposes rent control on these parks, they’ll all be gone in a few years. Rent control always hurts more people than it helps.