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Rent Control Audit Worries Carson Mobile Home Residents

Dawn Megli |
April 2, 2012 | 9:40 a.m. PDT

Contributor

(Courtesy of Creative Commons)
(Courtesy of Creative Commons)

With the Carson City Council's 4-1 approval to audit the city’s rent control program for mobile homes, a strong show of opposition among its mobile home residents has followed.

Mayor Jim Dear was the lone dissenter against a contract for $52,400 with the economic development advisement firm Rosenow Spevacek Group, Inc. The Santa Ana firm will audit the program which keeps rent for mobile home lots affordable for low-income residents. It will then make recommendations to improve the program based on any unnecessary costs or inefficiencies it finds.

Dear said he voted against the audit because he feared it would “open a can of worms” to tamper with the existing ordinance which has survived harsh legal challenges.

More than 60 people packed into the city council chamber on Mar. 20 with walkers, canes and small children, to oppose the audit. Far from improving the program, mobile home residents, like Jane Osuna, worried the audit would jeopardize the program they rely on to stay in their homes.

“I think they’re being penny-wise and pound foolish,” Osuna said.

Osuna moved to the Imperial Avalon Mobile Estates four years ago.  She was one of more than a dozen residents to offer a public comment. She said rent control was a major reason she moved to Carson.

“It was a deciding factor,” Osuna said.

But since California abolished its redevelopment agencies earlier this year, the program lost roughly half of its funding. The program caps the rent on Carson’s 2,300 mobile home lots at $500 per month. It is administered by the Mobile Home Rental Review Board and costs $200,000 to run each year. Osuna said she worried that without the program, lot rentals would soar to more than $1,000 a month.

Because the program will now be paid by the city’s general funds, Carson’s Economic Development Manager Cliff Graves suggested the audit.

“I was surprised it was so controversial,” Graves said.

Graves defended the audit, explaining that many of the program’s costs are scattered across different departments. The audit will determine the total cost of the program so funding can be allocated in the city’s next budget. A spokesman for Rosenow Spevacek Group, Inc. declined to comment on the contract.

Graves and several council members offered assurance that the rent control program was in no danger of being repealed.

“The issue of rent control is not on the table,” Graves told the audience.

Mayor Dear told those present that protecting rent control is a moral issue. He sympathized with the anxieties of mobile home residents and encouraged their involvement in the democratic process.

“It needs to be said on a regular basis all the time,” Dear said. “We need rent control.”

Ninety-seven cities in California have some form of rent control, according to the League of California Cities, and city records show that Carson established rent control for mobile homes in 1979.  City Attorney Bill Wynder said since then, mobile home park owners have challenged the ordinance in more than two dozen lawsuits. He said Carson’s rent control ordinance is one of the strongest in the state and an audit is unlikely to change that.

“There are always ways to cut costs without stripping principles,” Wynder said.

Many public comments expressed concern for the cost of the audit, which amounts to a quarter of the program’s annual costs. Residents suggested other ways for the city to save money, including replacing city employee cell phones with walkie-talkies.

Dr. Rita Boggs, former member of the Mobile Home Rental Review Board, said while the audit may not directly threaten rent control, scrutiny on the program has piqued the anxiety of many seniors, disabled persons and low-income families.

“They need rent control to survive,” Boggs said. “It’s more than a political issue.”

For Osuna, however, engaging in the political process has come part and parcel with protecting her home. The results of the audit won’t be ready for several months until after negotiations for next year’s budget begins. But when the audit’s recommendations are ready for the city council to review, Osuna said she will be there.

“I would like to have a voice in what happens in my community within a community,” Osuna said.



 

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