Lancaster Rejects Hike in Mobile-Home Rents

Bowing to tenant demands, the Lancaster City Council denied automatic rent increases this year for mobile-home park occupants after deadlocking on the same issue last month.

The 5-0 council decision Monday night means that owners of Lancaster’s 33 mobile-home parks, where an estimated 5,000 people live, can only raise rents if they submit and document such requests to a city panel, which would then rule after a public hearing.

Tenants, many of them elderly and retired, argued that they could not afford another citywide rent hike such as those granted by the council in past years. The city’s Mobilehome Rent Arbitration Board this year urged no automatic increase because of the recession. City officials had recommended a 4.4% hike this year.