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Santa Paula residents ask council to reclaim final appeal power in mobile‑home rent review
Summary
Residents of the 400 Mobile Home Estates urged the City Council to amend the mobile‑home rent control ordinance so the elected council — not a three‑member rent review commission — is the final appellate body; council agreed to place the matter on a future agenda and asked staff to report on the timeline and prior ordinance changes.
Dozens of residents of the 400 Mobile Home Estates told the Santa Paula City Council on Tuesday that an apparent mismatch between a posted timeline and the city’s ordinance has undermined trust in the rent‑review process and left families facing a proposed 45% rent increase without what they say is the promised appeal to the council.
Maria Cancino, a 26‑year resident of the mobile home park, told council, “The bottom line is that the city gave us a time limit for the rent review process and detailed description of how those decisions were to be made.” She said a posted notice had said appeals would move the case to the City Council, but residents later learned the posted notice did not match the ordinance in force.
Lena Partida, also a park resident, told the council: “When a government admits it made a mistake, it also has a responsibility to fix it.” Speakers asked the council to amend the mobile‑home rent control ordinance so that the City Council would serve as the final decision‑making body for appeals — an option ranked by residents as necessary oversight because the current three‑member rent review commission includes new appointees with no prior case history.
City staff and the city attorney acknowledged the public notice posted online contained an error and apologized; staff said the ordinance as written assigns final decision authority to the rent review commission and that changing that would require an ordinance amendment that could not legally affect the pending appeal before the commission. Staff agreed to provide council a written review of the timeline and a history of the ordinance change that created the current process.
Outcome and next steps: Council reached consensus to schedule a discussion of amending the ordinance at the next regular meeting (June 4) and directed staff to present a report on the timeline, prior ordinance language (the transcript records a 1982 reference), and options for handling the pending hearing date. Staff also said it will confer with the parties (park owner and resident counsel) about whether the hearing date can be continued while the council considers options.
