Renters, owners clash in Chula Vista mobile home parks

Chula Vista is becoming the next battlefield in a statewide dispute between mobile home park owners and the people who rent land from them.

The residents, who own their mobile homes and rent the land underneath them, are facing new challenges including increased fees, fewer opportunities to appeal rent decisions by park owners and rent increases that would be permitted when mobile homes change hands or a property is vacated.

Under the current system, mobile home owners are able to appeal decisions about rent increases to a seven-member board appointed by the City Council. Funding to operate that $84,000-a-year system typically comes from general fund revenues, but officials want to fund it by collecting a fee from park residents.

The most heated aspect of the debate is a proposed change that would allow a park owner to increase rent if the owner tries to sell his home. It would also remove the appeal process. Residents say the measure would greatly affect the resale value of their property and could cause people to become trapped in their homes by potentially unfair rent increases for the land.

Steve Molski, one of the opponents of the changes, is a senior citizen and resident of Terry’s Mobile Home Park on G Street.

“It boils down to this: For every $10 increase in the rent; the value of the mobile home drops by $1,000,” Molski said. “It keeps people stuck in their mobile homes and it’s just pure greed.”

Park owners say they are being unfairly blocked from realizing the full market value of their land.

Lynwood South Mobile Estates Owner Steve Epsten, 54, oversees the park his father built and also serves on the Mobile Home Rent Review Commission.

He said the rent issue sparks such hot emotions because it’s about more than the price of a plot of land.

“It’s about property rights, and the government interfering in private property rights,” Epsten said.

Chula Vista isn’t the only city grappling with changes at mobile home parks.

Tensions surfaced in Oceanside recently over a similar council-approved effort to loosen restraints on rent increases. Residents there have collected enough signatures to bring a citywide vote, and the city is in the process of verifying the signatures.

Several other cities in San Diego County have some variation of rent control, including Escondido, San Marcos and Santee. San Diego, unincorporated areas of the county and El Cajon do not practice it.

In 2008, California voters rejected Proposition 98, which would have eventually eliminated rent control statewide, despite hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign spending by park owners to support the measure. Property owners are now focusing their lobbying energies on city politicians across the state.

Penny Vaughn, the president of the Chula Vista Mobile Home Residents Association, is leading an effort to oppose the proposed changes, except for imposing a monthly $4 to $5 fee on every household. Vaughn said she is in favor of the monthly fee because it will insure that the seven-member Mobile Home Rent Review Commission will continue to operate.

Vaughn fears the modifications are just a first step.

“I’m telling people: ‘You can’t just sit around and be complacent anymore,’” she said.

The council is expected to weigh in on the matter July 12. The original ordinance has been on the books since 1982.

Mobile home parks have long been a contentious subject in Chula Vista, especially since a park named Jade Bay went bankrupt and displaced senior citizens and low-income residents in 2007.