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In Max Chun’s recent article on the Soquel RV park, Chun paraphrased Santa Cruz County Supervisor Manu Koenig, saying plans for the park’s closure are in part “because the county’s ordinance that controls rent for mobile home parks probably makes it difficult for the company to turn the kind of profit it would like to.”
I would like to unpack and clarify this.
Soquel Gardens, zoned for mobile home parks, has 20 spaces. Thirteen were owned by the former park owner and those spaces are not under the county’s ordinance. Monthly rents for those spaces are whatever amount the park owner chooses.
Another is now controlled by Harmony, as its owner sold them her home, leaving only six spaces rent-control spaces. Fourteen spaces are currently advertised for $1,495 per month, not including utilities.
There are also three apartments that are not covered by the ordinance. We don’t know the rent for them. Market rate comes to mind.
It is most certainly not “the county’s ordinance that … makes it difficult for the company to turn the kind of profit it would like to.” Unless, of course, no amount of profit is ever enough.
The rent on the six spaces can be increased annually, adjusted for the increased parcel’s property taxes and the Consumer Price Index, both of which are passed-through to those residents.
The ordinance also provides a process whereby a park owner can issue a notice of special rent adjustment for the six spaces that exceeds the normal rent increase amount.
It is not true that when the park’s permit to operate (PTO) “was revoked four years ago … many simply stopped paying their bills.”
The suspension of any park’s PTO by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development stipulates that park owners may not charge residents space rent until health and safety violations are resolved and the PTO reinstated. The suspension did not include utility payments, which the park owner could continue to bill residents. The former owner stopped billing residents for utilities. Harmony resolved the violations and now the residents of the six rent-controlled spaces are paying their rent and utilities as invoiced.
Let us be careful to understand the facts of this untenable situation, where existing residents who have lived at Soquel Gardens MHP for decades are not blamed for a poor business decision by a corporation that is trying to “make a profit” on the backs of longtime park residents.
Jean Brocklebank
Live Oak