North Bay mobile home owners rally against landlords' soaring rent demands
PETALUMA -- With the high cost of housing, some of the most affordable places to live in the Bay Area are mobile homes but they come with a vulnerability that some landlords are using to test the strength of local rent-control laws.
The rally at a park in Petaluma on Sunday was a coming together of residents from a number of mobile home parks in Sonoma County.
"We're all here in solidarity today to let them know that we all stand together and that we're not going to let them do this to our people!" organizer Angeles Cruz told the group of about 100 demonstrators.
Each of the three mobile home parks -- Youngstown, Little Woods and Country Side -- is protected by rent control laws, yet most residents have received rent increase demands well above the limits. In the case of Little Woods, a park with a high percentage of Spanish speaking people, the increases are as much at 300 percent and many are stuck because they own their mobile home but not the ground it sits on.
"So, a lot of times, they're in this rock and a hard place where they have to accept huge rent increases because they know the alternative would probably put them out. They wouldn't be able to afford to move," said Chad Bolla, with the North Bay Organizing Project.
"We are frightened by these threats and stand in solidarity with people at other parks who are also facing the same problem with Harmony!" said Norma Gonzalez, a resident of Little Woods.
Residents of two of the parks have been worried about the future of their homes since last summer. In July of 2023, residents at Youngstown and Little Wood received notices that the parks could be closing. The first notification of possible rent hikes came weeks later.
Harmony Communities also manages the Country Side Mobile Park in Cotati. Wayne Randall has lived in the park for 17 years and says it's a simple lifestyle.
"We have no amenities here. There's no clubhouse, no swimming pool, no sidewalks, no nothing," he said. "We're just living. But we're living at a rate that we can afford."
But now, the landlords want to remove the park's seniors-only status. So, in December, Cotati leaders voted to protect it, imposing a "senior housing overlay" which zones the property strictly for that purpose.
Afterward, property owner Nick Ubaldi threatened the council, saying, "You voted for a lawsuit. The property value far exceeds its current use. This is a private business and we will no longer bear the burden of Cotati's affordable housing efforts. The city can build and subsidize its own. After tonight's vote, we have decided to immediately begin the closure process for Country Side Mobile Home Park."
"I believe it's basically to get rid of rent control," said Randall. "It's the process of making people uncomfortable where they're at, how they're living. And that they have to conform to either higher rent increases or they will eventually get you out of here, somehow or another."
He fears it will only get worse.
"It gets darker and darker as they start to move forward," Randall said. "Evictions happen and you can see how they tear things apart and leave it lying on the ground. They don't care about what we think or how we feel."
It's becoming a familiar pattern. Those who live in mobile home parks often have little in the way of resources to fight. Youngstown activist Jodi Johnson said they're finding that by banding together they have more power than standing alone.
"Actually, where I see it going is that the park owners are going to see that they underestimated us," she said. "And that they will not prevail."
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