The state Legislature has passed a bill that grants greater protections to the rights of residents in mobile home parks slated to be converted to condominiums.
Even if signed into law by the governor, the bill likely comes too late for recent, disputed mobile home park conversions in Thousand Oaks and Ventura. In the future, however, it would allow local governments to give more weight to surveys of residents in deciding whether to approve condo conversions that permit park owners to sell mobile home lots instead of renting them out.
Currently, park operators must conduct a tenant survey gauging support for a possible conversion. But city and county governments cannot use the outcome — even overwhelming opposition or support — as the basis for denying or approving the conversion, under a series of court rulings on the issue.
“My bill makes sure that the voices of mobile home owners are heard before any park owner attempts to sell the property out from under them,” the bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, said in a statement Friday.
The bill passed the Senate late Thursday on a 21-14 vote, with local senators Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, in favor and Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, opposed. Strickland could not be reached for comment.
Called the Mobile Home Resident Protection Act of 2009, the bill passed the Assembly in May on a 41 vote. The Senate- approved version received final legislative approval early Saturday in the Assembly, with 44 votes in favor.
The measure goes next to the governor. If he signs it, the law would take effect Jan. 1.
A growing number of park owners, Nava said, have been using a loophole in state law to convert rental spaces to condominium ownership — a move some residents say would price them out of their homes.
To Nava and other critics, the conversions are attempts by park owners to skirt local rent control laws. State law eliminates rent control in a park where even just one unit has been purchased as a condominium.
Park owners and advocacy groups counter that it’s a property rights issue, that going the condo route is the best way to capitalize on their investments, and that it benefits residents who can afford to buy their lot.
The survey requirement, introduced in 2002, was adopted as a tool to collect information from residents, not to give them power to vote on a conversion, according to the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, which opposed Nava’s bill.
Ventura County has about 10,180 mobile home lots, according to the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
The Thousand Oaks City Council voted 4-0 last week to approve the conversion of the 304-space Vallecito Mobile Estates in Newbury Park to owner-occupied spaces.
Residents made emotional pleas to the council to oppose the conversion, saying it would hurt those on fixed incomes. But the city had little choice, City Attorney Amy Albano said. The park’s owners, Vedder Community Management, followed all state rules, and she cautioned the council that rejecting the conversion could expose the city to an expensive lawsuit.
Albano on Friday called the new bill an “important step in the right direction.” But while it would allow a city to consider the outcome of tenant surveys, the bill was stripped of initial language that would have allowed municipalities to more strictly regulate conversions.
Cities such as Ventura have seen such efforts struck down by the courts, which have ruled that state law takes precedence.
Last month, Superior Court Judge Glen Reiser ordered Ventura to approve — without condition — a motion filed by Stardust Mobile Estates LLC to convert its 125-lot Stardust Mobile Estates in the 11000 block of Telegraph Road.
Reiser said the city violated state law by deeming Stardust’s application incomplete and requesting a “laundry list” of information.
Ventura City Attorney Ariel Calonne called it a “sad loss” for park residents, of which a majority opposed the change in a survey. He said the city has not decided whether to appeal the court decision.
Calonne, however, also praised Reiser. “His decision was elegant,” Calonne said. “He recognized the city’s larger goals of preserving affordable housing are laudable and legitimate. He recognized this is a shared problem across the state, and that for now we have a crappy state law.”
Owners of Ventura’s 15 other mobile home parks so far have not sought conversions. Craig Hull of Ventura hopes the new bill will be signed and help keep it that way.
“I don’t think there would be support for conversion at our park. Very few people could afford to do that,” said Hull, who lives at the 72-lot Sea Esta Village Mobile Home Park on East Main Street and is president of the Ventura Mobile Home Residents Council.
He said the threat of conversion is “very real” and weighs heavily on residents’ minds. The fact that residents, many elderly and on fixed incomes, currently have little say once a conversion process begins worries him, he said.
“I’m very concerned for all park residents,” he said, but the bill “could be our saving grace.”
— Star State Bureau Chief Timm Herdt contributed to this report.
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