2 Sides of Rent Increases for Mobile Home Parks

Re “Bid to Increase Mobile Homes’ Rent Threatens Retiree Havens,” July 31:

The Golden State Manufactured Home Owners League has been working on mobile-home space rents for years and has made some progress on this issue. We have a legislative representative in Sacramento to keep track of mobile home laws and work with legislative committees on them.

The author of this article should write a follow-up article on this important issue and get the views of key legislators plus the residents of other parks.

This problem is statewide, not just the central coast. California has more than 5,000 mobile home parks, and the rising rents are a problem from Oregon to the Mexican border, from the sea to the Arizona-Nevada border.

With the rising cost of housing and stock losses, increasing health-care costs and so forth, mobile homes often are a last resort for low-income housing. Seniors are being priced out of this market.

Milt Burdick

Vice President,

Golden State Manufactured

Home Owners League Zone C

Brea

*

Mobile home owners are tenants who rent land within a park that provides them a lot for their home. Along with the lot come amenities and services. The mobile home park, the landowner, provides and maintains the streets, utilities, common-area landscaping and recreation facilities, including clubhouses, pools, Jacuzzi and on-site management. In other words, along with renting, mobile home owners receive a tremendous amount of services.

Mobile home owners own a depreciating asset--just like an automobile, motor home or, for that matter, any structure.

It is not the mobile home or the structure built on a lot that appreciates. It is the land that appreciates. It is the owner of the land who holds the valuable and appreciating asset.

If mobile home owners went out to buy a single-family residential lot for their manufactured home in San Juan Capistrano, they would have to pay $200,000 or more for the lot alone.

And, after they put their home on the lot, they would have to provide and pay for all of the amenities and services they would need to live on the lot.

Shame on those who believe that the owner of the land is not entitled to receive a fair-market rent based on the value of the land. Those who live in mobile homes live on land that is valued far in excess of what he or she is paying for it because of rent control.

Paul Bostwick

Anaheim