Petaluma’s latest city fee is aimed directly at mobile home park owners

Amid an ongoing dispute with mobile home park owners who have officially signaled their intention to close two parks that are home to nearly 200 city residents, the Petaluma City Council has added a fee to the city’s main fee schedule that would be charged to owners for closing their parks.

The new “mobile home park conversion fee,” passed unanimously at the Aug. 5 council meeting, is a means for the city to cover its expenses in preparing required reports and gathering more information as part of its closure procedures – a months-long process that began after the owners of Youngstown Mobile Home Park and Little Woods Mobile Villa submitted a joint letter on June 21 declaring their intent to close the parks, according to a staff report.

“This fee … is really just to cover the full cost of the staff time spent administering and responding to the applications,” City Attorney Eric Danly told council members. “I don’t know exactly how much that will be, there’s no cap.”

Council members voted 6-0 to implement the fee, with Janice Cader Thompson absent. In May, the City Council approved updates to its fee structure that did not include fees for mobile home closures or remodeling.

Danly said the city has not experienced such a process – closing or remodeling any of its mobile home parks – since the mobile home ordinance was passed in 2006.

For a park to close under city regulations, the city must consider whether there are enough trailer parking spaces in the county to accommodate residents made homeless by the closure, or whether there are suitable alternative housing options and whether “reasonable” relocation costs will be covered, he said.

“The proposal to close the communities where nearly 200 of our households live is a very significant and very disruptive undertaking and will require very careful consideration by the City Council, which we hope will be facilitated by our regulations,” Danly said.

Based on a quick calculation, Council Member John Shribbs concluded that if the closure process took 100 man-hours – likely including attorneys and upper management – to implement the park closures could cost the city between $100,000 and $300,000.

Danly did not say whether the estimated figure was accurate, but said: “It is true that the fees can be significant. We cannot estimate exactly how much they will be because this procedure is still new and the experience (of the staff) is there.”

City Manager Peggy Flynn clarified: “Even though we are going through this process, it does not mean that closure is imminent. We believe that just closing a mobile home park here or anywhere else is astronomically expensive.”

Given the large amount of effort the closures will require, council members Shribbs, Mike Healy and Karen Nau said they hoped to receive a cost estimate from staff.

“If we publish the estimated costs, based solely on your description, it could persuade (the owners) to decide against (closure),” Nau said.

“Elder abuse”

The item was announced just hours after more than 100 mobile home park residents were interviewed in the City Council chambers to attend the public hearing, which came after city leaders met to discuss upcoming court cases in closed session.

In their comments, Petaluma residents condemned the park owners’ actions and called on the city to enforce its rules on mobile homes.

“I agree that this is elder abuse because I suffer from depression and anxiety and we know we are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder,” said David Jones, a resident of Capri Villa mobile home park. “And we don’t have deep pockets. Once we let go of that last rung, we are basically left with a choice between homelessness and suicide.”

Harmony Communities bought Capri Villa in late April and quickly proposed rent increases of more than $300, leading to an arbitration hearing on Tuesday. The Stockton-based company also owns Little Woods Mobile Villa – a 78-unit all-ages park on Lakeville Highway – and more than 30 other communities in California and Oregon.

Danly said the city issued a notice of violation at Little Woods after the owners tried to push through a second rent increase of more than $600 in late June – just days after an arbitrator rejected the park owners’ previous proposal to raise the rent by $1,531.22. Residents at other parks in Fresno and Santa Rosa owned by Harmony have had similar disputes with park owners.

Meanwhile, an arbitrator last March ordered a $118 rent increase for residents of Youngstown Mobile Home Park, a 102-unit senior park on N. McDowell Boulevard. The park’s owners, Three Pillars Communities — which operates over 70 parks in 13 states, according to its website — wanted a rent increase of over $900 per month.

Youngstown residents joined residents of Harmony-owned parks in condemning what they saw as retaliatory behavior by the park administration.

Danly said the council and city remain “firmly committed to ensuring the effectiveness” of the city’s rent control and mobile home closure and reuse regulations, and that they will continue to “vigorously maintain, enforce and strengthen” those regulations.

He noted concerns raised by residents, including allegations that the park owners refused to offer rent control, violated the city’s senior citizen ordinances, and more.

“We have received information about demands from mobile home parks that residents waive their rights under our regulations,” he said. “This is expressly illegal under our regulations.”

Reach staff writer Jennifer Sawhney at 707-521-5346 or [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @sawhney_media.