Mountain View Town Council customers agreed Tuesday night time to prioritize extending hire handle to cellular residences, unanimously agreeing to rapid-monitor an ordinance which is set to come ahead of the council as quickly as August.
The conclusion will come additional than a 12 months just after council associates signaled assistance for extending renter protections to Mountain View’s 6 cell household parks. The ordinance is anticipated to intently mirror the city’s current rent manage law, which covers apartments and other rental models.
Cell household teams have lengthy held that rent regulate, beneath the Local community Stabilization and Fair Lease Act (CSFRA), ought to have utilized to cellular houses from the get-go. But the city’s Rental Housing Committee, tasked with administering rent regulate, has regularly disagreed.
Cell property citizens sued to reverse the committee’s decision, but in the long run misplaced the fight in court in January. City officials cited the pending litigation as cause to pump the brakes on a mobile dwelling hire command ordinance, which designed the defeat in courtroom a inexperienced light to go forward.
The rough framework of the ordinance is that it will limit once-a-year rent raises very similar to the CSFRA, although getting rid of provisions from the city’s hire manage legislation that would have conflicted with the state’s Mobilehome Residency Law. The Rental Housing Committee would be accountable for overseeing and administering lease regulate for cellular houses, which involves petitions to raise or lessen hire.
Council customers all endorsed expediting the ordinance at the March 16 conference, making it a substantial priority in the course of a prolonged, late-evening debate on what massive-ticket things the town must tackle more than the following several many years. City officials cautioned the council to consider a lean strategy — noting that team time is previously strained — and a great deal of do the job obtained deferred or outright taken off.
Casualties include a area ordinance that would’ve prohibited the sale of e-vaping and flavored tobacco products in Mountain Check out, and an ordinance that would’ve controlled e-scooters.
Though mobile house lease regulate is shifting forward, some of the nuts and bolts of the ordinance are up for debate. At the Tuesday meeting, Councilwoman Lisa Matichak advocated for an exception in the ordinance that would allow for landlords and tenants to negotiate a lengthy-phrase lease that wouldn’t always have the similar terms as the CSFRA. She stated this would be a robust option for “responsible” park owners who have a potent romance with their tenants and who you should not genuinely want lease control.
Mobile dwelling park house owners and regional teams together with the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association have extensive advocated for these accords, or design leases, in lieu of lease regulate.
Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga stated the exception for very long-expression leases must, at the quite the very least, arrive back as an option for consideration in August or September, when the ordinance is anticipated to appear right before the council for approval.
“I would like to see all of that come back to us, so we can truly make a decision what is best for mobile property parks,” Abe-Koga stated.
Other council members felt these design leases only opened the door for exceptions to a uniformly used established of renter protections for Mountain View’s cell properties. Councilwoman Sally Lieber mentioned she desired a “clear” ordinance, which cell home inhabitants overwhelmingly assist and anticipate from the council.
“It is not my want to alter the goalposts now,” Lieber explained. “I feel we require to hold religion with what we have provided to the public.”
Councilwoman Alison Hicks agreed, and said she has still to hear from cell dwelling residents who want an accord more than what is contained in the CSFRA.
Town Legal professional Krishan Chopra explained the ordinance becoming crafted guiding the scenes proper now does give for an exception for park entrepreneurs to offer some form of alternate arrangement or lengthy-phrase lease, so long as it is at least as protecting as the fundamental hire control ordinance.
On the marketing campaign trail very last 12 months, Matichak explicitly advocated for model leases along with hire command, dependable with her calls for an exception Tuesday evening. Lieber’s phone calls for a clear invoice echo her decadeslong struggle for mobile household rent command in the city.