When La Habra Resident Susie Cruz moved to Friendly Village Mobile Home Park three years ago, she thought she would be able to retire without having to worry about paying rent for the rest of her life.
Now, she’s working at TJ Maxx in order to keep the home she once thought would be an affordable way for her to live out her life.
“I want to enjoy myself. I don’t want it to be such a stress that every month you’re sitting here going ‘Oh my God, how am I gonna pay this?’ or ‘I gotta do this or I gotta switch this.’ Because it’s hard, and it never was,” Cruz said.
Residents like Cruz are seeing space rent hikes go up by 5% to 6% every year at Friendly Village and many seniors living in the mobile home park – living on social security checks – are struggling to pay the increasing rent.
Two separate community groups in the park have called on elected officials to enact a rent control ordinance to stabilize rent prices at Friendly Village – a chapter of the Golden State Manufactured-Owner’s League and the “Seniors Who Need Help.”
Now, city council members may finally respond to their demands.
Council members directed staff on Oct. 19 to craft a report focusing on the groups’ rent control proposals, find out how much rent has been increasing annually and see what other OC cities have done at the request of City Councilman Jamez Gomez.
It is unclear when exactly that report will come back to the city council, but it’s a move that the groups are saying is the first step to rent control for Friendly Village mobile home owners.
“They’ve been coming here week after week,” Gomez said at the Oct. 19 council meeting. “Ladies, to all of you, thank you for being here and making us aware of your concerns.”
Councilman Delwin Lampkin said he has been talking to the Friendly Village chapter of the Golden State Manufactured-Owner’s League for eight months and was going to call for a report on the legalities of imposing rent but didn’t think he’d get support from his colleagues.
“One of the things I told the ladies earlier on in the year was that the reason why I hadn’t agendized it sooner was because I didn’t think I would actually get a second motion,” Lampkin said in a Wednesday phone interview.
He also questioned the city’s conflict of interest in the issue, as two of La Habra’s mobile home parks are managed by the city.
“I have to really weigh this and say, ‘Are we creating a conflict of interest by imposing rent stabilization on other entities, other landlords that also own mobile home parks?’ These are some of the questions that I’m asking myself that I have to really sit down and deliberate on,” Lampkin said.
He said he’s glad Gomez moved to agendize a report, because now the city council is able to have a “robust conversation” on the topic with insights and comparisons of other cities from experts and city staff.
The manager of Friendly Village was unavailable for comment and owner Sun Communities did not return a request for comment on Friday.
Two Groups in Same Mobile Home Park Fight For Rent Control
Joyce Payne, a member of the Friendly Village chapter of the Golden State Manufactured-Owner’s League, said she and her neighbors in the group have been pushing for rent control for two years.
“Part of it was just observing. Watching how things were put on the agenda, watching how the directions were given, and then that helped us to know what to do to go do our speeches, to present packets,” Payne said.
Friends and residents Linda Hudak, Mary Anne Mendel, Marie Westrope and Payne decided to start pushing for rent control in 2024 by restarting an old chapter of the Golden State Manufactured-Owners League.
Westrope and Payne have been going to almost every single council meeting to advocate for their cause, with the women in the group saying it was getting hard to buy gifts for their grandkids or even spend on things they need themselves.
Westrope said she hasn’t had real glasses in a long time and has been getting by using glasses she bought from CVS.
She fears that costs will go up so high, many people could end up homeless, and she thinks the community will deteriorate if something isn’t done to control rent increases.
“It’s got to be on everyone’s mind that’s in this park and in the other ones too. Thinking that, ‘If it keeps going up, what’s gonna happen? Where are we gonna go? What happens to our money that we put in?’ It’s very disturbing, it really is,” Westrope said.
The group said their efforts took longer than expected and they began missing their quarterly meetings because they didn’t have positive updates for residents – something they theorize caused many residents to think the Golden State Manufactured-Owner’s League group wasn’t working on the issue any longer.
As residents started to sell their homes, Friendly Village resident Randy McDonald formed the “Seniors Who Need Help” group in an attempt to tackle the rising rents after hearing nothing from the Golden State Manufactured-Owner’s League.
“People are losing their homes. They’re selling their homes to move to other states or to cheaper areas in California,” McDonald said in an interview last month.
“Maybe if we can get it done in La Habra, maybe people in Brea or Fullerton can go to their city councils and say ‘Look what they did. We deserve that too.’”
For the past three months, McDonald and residents Beverly Bartlett, Diana Gutierrez and Lupe Calderon have also been calling on elected officials for help – even taking their efforts a step further by gathering enough signatures to force a council discussion on the issue or put it on a future election ballot if a rent control ordinance isn’t put on a future agenda soon.
“Just hearing people calculating what it’s gonna be like in four years, five years, and I know I’m not going to be able to afford to live here,” Bartlett said.
“I thought this was gonna be my last purchase of a home but, apparently, maybe not.”
Rent Control in OC & California
The request for the report comes after the California Tenant Protection Act went into effect in 2020 across the state aimed at providing protection against excessive rent increases and unfair evictions from landlords.
Under the law, landlords and property managers of single family homes or apartments are only allowed to increase rent up to 5% plus the Consumer Prince Index in any 12-month period.
The law does not apply to mobile home owners renting lot space in a park, unless a city council enacts protections on a local level.
In California, 95 cities and 11 counties have enacted local rent stabilization ordinances for mobile home owners.
According to the Mobile Home Park Home Owners Allegiance, out of the 95 cities, only two in Orange County have passed mobile home rent ordinances.
San Juan Capistrano has had a mobile home rent control ordinance in effect since 1980, with the maximum allowed rent increase being 3.2% for the time period of April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027.
Santa Ana followed suit, with their rent stabilization ordinance going into effect November 2022. The maximum allowable rent increase is 2.87% for the time period of Sept. 1 2026 to Aug. 31, 2027.
However, Santa Ana’s ordinance only applies to mobile homes built on or before Feb. 1, 1995.
Sara Leon is a Voice of OC reporting fellow. You can reach her at admin@voiceofoc.org
