Novato poised to update mobile home rent-control law

The Novato City Council is moving forward with a plan to revise its rent-control ordinance governing mobile home parks.

The changes under consideration would cap annual rent increases on mobile home spaces at the consumer price index (CPI) or 4%, whichever is lower. Other revisions of the law would make it easier for park owners to recoup expenditures on beneficial capital improvements.

The council introduced a version of the ordinance for a first reading at its May 7 meeting. The reading was postponed until the council’s June meeting, however, after the sponsor, the Los Robles Mobile Home Park, requested minor changes.

The Los Robles Mobile Home Park has 215 residences. Residents who are 55 or older own their homes but rent their lots. The homes range from $250,000 to $450,000. Some residents pay monthly rent on their lots, while others sign multiyear leases.

“Most of us have worked as service professionals,” Katie Cartwright, president of the homeowners association, told the Novato City Council in January. “We’re teachers, nurses, writers and construction workers. Many of us still work. Some of us are on fixed incomes, meaning Social Security. Our life savings are often tied to our homes.”

Paul Goldstone, who owns the park, approves of the proposed changes, according to Timothy Hansen, a project manager for Goldstone Management.

“We’ve reviewed the ordinance together, and he’s supportive of the 4%,” Hansen said. “We realize that a huge CPI increase would be difficult for a lot of people there.”

Other mobile home parks in Novato include the Silver Penny RV Park, the Novato RV Park and the Marin Valley Mobile Country Club, which is owned by the city. So far, no opposition to the changes has materialized.

The city’s mobile home rent control ordinance, adopted in 1997, limits annual rent increases to the change in the CPI. That ordinance allows park owners to pass on the cost of beneficial capital improvements through temporary rent increases, but the law requires park owners to first either secure the consent of a majority of the park residents or successfully file a rent increase petition.

Hansen said that last summer, at the request of residents at Los Robles Mobile Home Park, Goldstone made a number of beneficial capital improvements.

“The residents came to us and they said, We want the roads fixed. We want an Americans with Disabilities Act bathroom, and we don’t want to flood,” said Hansen. “So we did that.”

Hansen said, nevertheless, that Goldstone subsequently failed to secure the approval of a majority of the residents to raise rents to pay for the improvements. As a result, Goldstone was forced to go through the petition process laid out in the ordinance.

Goldstone eventually secured approval to recoup $360,000, but he had to spend $40,000 on city filing fees, expert testimony and loan carrying costs to achieve that result.

“That process made management and the homeowners association take a deep look at how Chapter 20 could be improved for both of our benefits.” Cartwright told the Novato City Council at the January meeting. Chapter 20 is the section of Novato’s city code that contains the rent-control ordinance.

The park’s CPI increase has exceeded 3% five times from 2013 to 2023. In three of the cases, the CPI remained under 4%, but in 2018 it was 4.3% and in 2022 it climbed to 5.7%.

In addition to capping rents at 4%, the proposed changes would allow park owners to recoup beneficial capital improvement petition expenses through rent increases. They would also allow tenants to initiate improvement requests to be funded through rent increases.

Hansen said the idea “is for the HOA to come in and bless something so we don’t have to do a hearing. It’s a win for everybody.”

Stephen Rosenthal, the association’s treasurer, said, “We were concerned that if the owner had to go through that hearing process, work would be postponed, because who wants to go through this giant bureaucratic hassle?”

Rosenthal said high inflation isn’t the only thing residents have to worry about. When a mobile home park in Petaluma changed ownership recently, the new owner attempted to raise the rent of mobile home residents when their long-term leases expired.

“At some point, our park will be sold. The park’s owner is in his mid 70s,” Rosenthal told Novato council members at the May meeting. “We want to avoid arbitration and legal costs.”

The chief reason that the first reading was delayed until June is that Rosenthal wants the city to add more explicit language to the existing rent control ordinance stating that all residents, both those who pay monthly rent and those who hold long-term leases, are protected.

“The language is in there,” Rosenthal said, “but it’s written in such a way that unless you’re a lawyer you won’t understand it.”

He also wants the council to review the filing fees for petitioning to recoup expenditures on beneficial capital improvements.

“Right now,” Rosenthal said, “the cost of filing that petition, whether you’re a park owner or anybody else, is very high.”