Speaker 0: Motion carries. Item 17. Report from Development Services. Recommendation to request a city attorney to draft an urgency ordinance to temporarily limit mobile home space rent increases and direct the city manager to prepare a report on long term mobile home rent stabilization options citywide.
Speaker 5: I. When reporting that any.
Speaker 6: Mr. Vice Mayor, this is it. This is my item. Is it possible to get a staff report and hear public comment first?
Speaker 5: Thank you. Yes, that'll be fine. We have 13 individual. I can speak on this item. So could you please line up and you get 90 seconds?
Speaker 4: I think we're going to go with the staff report.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Everyone, please. Thank you very much. So, Patrick, you're our housing development bureau manager, will be given the staff report.
Speaker 7: Good evening, Mayor. City Council. On October 22nd, the City Council requested that the city manager research options for regulating mobile home park space rents. We've conducted some preliminary research on the California mobile home residency law. The number and type of mobile home parks in Long Beach. And Mobile Home Park. Rent stabilization ordinances in California. The California mobile home residency law regulates mobile home park tenancies, including rental agreements and leases, fees, terminations of tenancy and noticing. It does not limit the amount of rent increases, and it explicitly allows for rent increases to cover pass costs for capital improvements, taxes and other government fees. The morale also requires just calls for termination of tenancy and provides seven reasons for termination. Land. These parks are parks owned by a single owner, by a single owner or operator. Spaces in land lease parks are leased to mobile home owners. There are ten such parks in Long Beach containing 696 mobile home spaces. Seven of these parks containing 1139 spaces are not age restricted, and three parks with 557 spaces are restricted to seniors. 55 and over. About a hundred cities in California have adopted a rent stabilization ordinance or so RSS limit, annual base rent increases, often basing allowed increases on changes to the Consumer Price Index. However, RSA was still allow for owners to pass on capital, improved pass on capital improvements and other expenses to tenants, resulting in potentially significant increases to overall monthly rental expenses for tenants. RSS also require the establishment of a rent control board and ongoing city administration and enforcement result resulting in potentially significant cost to the city. Those costs would likely be passed on to tenants as pass through fees and some jurisdictions have repealed their are also due to excessive litigation. Terms of recommendations and next steps the city council could receive and file staff's report and take no further action at this time. Or if the Council would like to consider restricting mobile home spaces rents. The Council can consider today's recommendation to request the city attorney to draft an urgency ordinance to temporarily limit mobile home space rent increases and direct the city manager to prepare a thorough report on long term mobile home rent stabilization options. This will involve hiring an expert consultant to assist staff with research, the preparation of a report and the development of recommendations for the Council's consideration at a future date. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Not only glad to have a wonderful comment on becoming so, we have a doting individuals. Would you please line up? Actually, it's a win. Deborah. Tom Lockhart, very silly. Karen Irvine, those individuals, you have 90 seconds.
Speaker 3: Hello, Council. With great respect, I wanted to speak on this. My name is Windsock. I'm a mature mobile estate resident and I wanted to report to you the newest information that we've received at 245 this afternoon. Our attorney, as you know, had been put in touch with attorney Matt reports for park ownership. And that occurred on November 18th when Susie Price, our respected counsel women, had facilitated that connection. And so on the 19th, Rich Anthony facilitated the introduction of the two attorneys. They proceeded to dialog and make progress with respect to some of the nuanced language in the most recent offer that we received, one which was dated actually it was dated the 18th, but we received it. What I'm saying is that we have this information that we've not been able to process yet. It's been scanned into the record, so you should have it available to you. I'm not lobbying for a moratorium or against a moratorium, simply asking for more time to assimilate the information in this most recent communication.
Speaker 6: From Attorney Matt Reps. To our attorneys so that we can understand why.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much next week.
Speaker 3: Honorable Mayor and city council members. Thank you for bringing this back up on the agenda from November 19th. We appreciate your report. And we look forward to a positive outcome as and when just explained. And we just got new information in in the content. It's two pages long with very fine print and very a lot of information. Six times it mentions that everything will be confirmed later in a written document. So it's almost like a proposal that maybe this and maybe that it's better than the situation we were in before. You mentioned in your report about capital improvements or I don't think you talked about gambling premiums, you're talking about capital expenditures. And I talked to a gentleman yesterday who's lived in the park for 30 years. He says from his perspective, no maintenance has been done in the park the entire time he's lived there, except for securing the streets and being coming up to speed here. The last two years, we've been in progress with lots of maintenance things that should have been taken care of over decades, and it's just now coming almost to fruition.
Speaker 9: We've got a lot of places really in disruption still, even though.
Speaker 6: They're trying to get.
Speaker 3: Them by the by the end of the year. So we're asking probably we do need an ordinance, emergency ordinance, because at least it would put a halt to and we can still look at this documentation that just came today. And so we are in favor or support rent stabilization. If you want to go that direction.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Next speaker, you please state your name.
Speaker 3: Deborah McNamara. In 2011, there was another mobile home park in this and they raised the rent so high that people lost their homes, they had to walk away. Now there's 153 homes that people just walked away. And 2012 I moved into that mobile home park, the Belmont Shores. 2014, I moved my family, my parents in so I could take care of them. Well, they just passed away. So I have two houses in the game. If I have to lose my house because I can't afford to pay because their raise it, their goal is to raise our rents up to $2,000, they're going to go to 88%. Was there a second initiative that they gave us? $88 extra and for the next four years and what's going to happen in four years? They're going to do the same. They're going to raise another $88 until we get the total of $2,000. And who's going to be able to pay that? We're seniors. We're getting older. We're not getting younger. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Next speaker.
Speaker 1: Tom Lockhart. I'm a resident of BSM, a mobile home park. We have received, as Wen said recently today, very promising news from our attorney, who has made considerable progress with the park owners to the point where it is an acceptable agreement now based on specific assurances from the property owner, which will be followed up in writing. We want to thank all of you for helping us over the past couple of months, but there is no further action needed from the council. And we all will have to remember when you're considering this moratorium in our last rent offer from the park owners, it very specifically said if a moratorium is passed, they will rescind all their rent offers and hit us with the maximum rent they're allowed, which is anything they're allowed. They could put it up to $2,000 a month on January 1st. That's the overriding consideration. We cannot afford that. So I ask all of you respectfully to vote against this moratorium motion. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Next speaker.
Speaker 6: Hello, I'm Mary Sealy. I live at Belmont Shores, Mumbles states. I too am against this building on the moratorium and the RSL, along with six of my neighbors that I was able to find out from. We can't afford to take the chance that they will follow through with their threat of raising it to market value. I spoke to Newport Pacific this week and they told me that if this does go through, they will raise our rent to the market value. So even if it does go through, I will lose my home because I cannot afford to pay that. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Next speaker. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council Members Karen and Goni from Belmont Shore Mobile States. First of all, I'd like to thank the council, the council and particularly Councilwoman Susie Price and Deputy City Attorney Rich. I really, really, really appreciated your input and your hard work towards getting us what we have today. Well, I would love to continue to pursue long term protection through an interim moratorium and eventually in RCO. We cannot do so due to the fact that our management Newport Pacific properties will remove any rent credits and charges the $2,000 a month effective January 1st to 2020. Therefore, we cannot place our residents in jeopardy by continuing working towards protection by way of an RCO. However, I do congratulate you on protecting the other tenants in Long Beach, and I only wish that you could have protected us. Mobile home owners. We're very captive tenants, and it would have been nice to to have the time to educate everyone on the council to really what an hour or so does in comment to the the report. I looked at a property down in Oceanside. There are also cost $6.30 to each tenant. So it's not very costly.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. You know, I finished the first six because the next six speakers will be John Gonzalez, Greg and Kirkpatrick Lopez. And very good you. And Elsa and Maria. Those are the last six figures.
Speaker 1: Good evening.
Speaker 4: Mayor and City Council.
Speaker 1: My name is Jared Gonzales. I represent Western Manufactured.
Speaker 4: Housing Communities Association, a mesa statewide.
Speaker 1: Trade association that represents mobile.
Speaker 4: Home park.
Speaker 1: Owners and.
Speaker 4: Operators throughout California. Mobile home park owners in Long Beach are mom and pop family owned businesses.
Speaker 1: Who provide an affordable housing solution to a few thousand Long Beach residents. Our partners are compassionate and care for the residents and from the parks they operate. They invest in their parks to help create communities both they and their residents can be proud of. That's the status quo in Long Beach. A moratorium is not needed. There is no widespread problem with rent increases for mobile home parks in Long Beach.
Speaker 4: A moratorium creates uncertainty and will stall plans.
Speaker 1: For park improvement.
Speaker 4: Moratoriums will create an unnecessary citywide tension between park owner.
Speaker 1: Park owners and residents that doesn't exist.
Speaker 4: Today. Therefore, I ask that council keep in place.
Speaker 1: What's been working for decades.
Speaker 4: And not move forward with an unnecessary limit on mobile.
Speaker 1: Home rent increases. Thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Next we go.
Speaker 1: Evening. Vice Mayor and council. My name is Greg Kirkpatrick. We own several mobile home parks in California mostly, and we own the largest one in Long Beach up at Villa Park up in North Long Beach. We've had a great rapport with our tenants for over 20 years. We've gone through increases. We've gone through all of the improvements to the parks similar to Belmont Shores. We've been involved with cursory met with certain council members, given our opinion, particularly based on our experience with other cities. We have several parks in rent stabilization, rent, court, rent control. We know how to deal. It's not our suggestion by any means to go that route, particularly a more a moratorium. It causes us as landlords to seek the highest rent possible because we don't know what the future is. So it impacts our tenants. What you guys decided to do tonight? We're a big advocate of meeting with the tenants. I personally got out of a big all hands meeting with a park in Northern California just this week. We are involved. We're passionate. We monitor these parks and we are concerned and we deal with some of them on a day to day basis. We have senior parks where they have fixed income. We deal with those people personally. We come up with customized rent structures, which is exactly from what I can tell is going on here. So I would not suggest going out.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, sir.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 4: Hello, counsel. Once again, Alberto Lopez. Oliver here in support of the moratorium, supporting the mobile home folks as well. You know, the rents continue to go up and people are ending up in the streets. And I don't think it's right for mobile homeowners to end up losing their property because they can't afford a rent increase. We always hear, you know, landlords come in or owners come in and saying, well, I talked to my tenants or my mobile home residents, but not other landlords or not other mobile homeowners do that. Only a very few. And so I do support this and hopefully you take a stance in supporting homes for all and supporting our seniors as well as they fight for their homes. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Next speaker.
Speaker 3: Good evening, city council. My name is Ailsa Tung with Long Beach forward. Here to stand in strong support of mobile home.
Speaker 6: Owners and mobile homes.
Speaker 3: Citywide rent stabilization for both mobile home owners and for rental tenants. This item is an urgency item and agree.
Speaker 6: With the urgency of this.
Speaker 3: Item. The urgency is to protect mobile home.
Speaker 6: Owners, to protect.
Speaker 3: Tenants, and to prevent homelessness.
Speaker 6: The urgency is not to wholesale repeal a.
Speaker 3: Local tenant protection ordinance without any regard to preserving the.
Speaker 6: Strongest parts of that ordinance. That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 3: Earlier tonight on item.
Speaker 6: 23 with the repeal of the.
Speaker 3: Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance. So once again, we stand in strong support.
Speaker 6: Of mobile home. Citywide rent stabilization and rent stabilization for all tenants.
Speaker 3: Let's protect tenants, protect mobile homeowners, prevent homelessness.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. That's.
Speaker 6: Good evening, council members. My name is Murray. I'm a proud Yuan resident since I migrated here at the age of three. And now I'm the director of Community Organizing for Housing Long Beach. I've been doing this work for about three, three years, and every day I saw a tenant. What they told me specifically was that LA Beach needs rent control. So last year, in 2018, we pulled paperwork to put rent control on the ballot. One thing we do know is that rent control works for the people that need it the most the poor, the elderly, people with disabilities, families on low income, etc. You already know this and I hope you do know this. It's very clear that tenant issues have come up substantially this year, and I invite you to expand the dialog on what needs to follow after this. We are directly connected all as tenants, and I am here to say that we support this. So to keep our diversity and our strength as a tenant majority city, what should follow next as examples is a local enforcement mechanism to allow both tenants and landlords to be a part of this bigger dialog. I just want to remind you all again. Each and every time I come up here to talk about tennis, to support tennis, to support families, I'll let you know one thing, that when tennis rise, our cities with our city will thrive. Support these tenants today. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Mr. Good, are you planning on speaking? Goodbye. Just five.
Speaker 6: So I think to hook up right here took my laptop. I think this is the first time we've been doing this from the dais. So I'm going to hook up here and see if. It worked. Great. Excellent. So I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. And I think a lot of the general comments we're hearing about rent control and tenant protections don't apply to this situation. And I'm going to talk a little bit about why it's apples and oranges. And I didn't know that before we started this conversation. So I'm going to go quickly through a timeline of events. So beginning in October, the Beaumont Shaw Mobile Estates resident started to contact my office about notice of a rent increase that they had received on October 18th. Within a short period of time, I filed a supplemental counsel item to educate counsel on our options, which happened earlier this evening and was continued to today as at a request, the request of the residents. On October 21st, I had a conference call with the residents attorney and our city attorney, Rich Anthony, who has been a tremendous partner to me and my team on this issue. I want to thank him for that. We've both learned a lot about mobile home law since October, and it really, really is not analogous to regular tenant law. And I'm going to talk about that some more. From a legal standpoint. On October 22nd, I spoke with the Belmont Shore Mobil Estate's owners and asked that they make several changes as a result of the discussion I had had with the resident's attorney the day before. So I did not waste any time. I was asked by the residents attorney. There were three deficiencies that he identified. I reached out immediately to the owners and they immediately complied on November 1st with the three things I asked for. On the on November 1st, they sent a revised contract with the changes that I had requested, which included extension of the rental credit for an additional time, a legally binding contract, which is what the residents attorney wanted, a subsidy program which the attorney did not ask me to ask for, but I myself asked for, and eliminating the timeline for signing the agreement, which their attorney did ask me. They agreed to all of those things. On November 18th, the city and I it's the city attorney and I met with the residents. There were hundreds of residents in attendance to discuss options and answer questions. Many residents indicated that they had not received their personal rent letters. On the very next day, the personal letters were received. They were hand-delivered, is my understanding, at my request to all of the residents. The council item was continued at the request of the residents and the Council office requested the management team ensure all residents have their letters and that they are all offered one on one meetings. Since that time, 18 one on one meetings have been requested and 18 have been completed. Subsidies have been given to every single resident that qualified. Ongoing discussions between the attorneys at the facilitation of our city attorney and myself has resulted in assurances by ownership that have taken care of. The main concern that I and this Council had, which was displacement and homelessness. And those discussions have resulted in assurances that will assist with those two critical issues. And our office has heard from residents as early as last week, letting us know that they were happy with the agreement. While happy is probably not the right word, but that they were satisfied that management had met with them. Some indicated that they did not want to come to council meetings and they felt intimidated to speak at the meetings with the residents. These were calls, phone calls and emails that our office received from residents saying that they felt management had come a long way. So going back to the October 18th item, I filed the supplemental. And when I did so, my intent was to protect residents from being displaced. That was my concern. That has always been my concern. What happens to the property in perpetuity? Who get it gets assigned to if someone moves out? What the property value may be are not my concern. My concern is displacement and homelessness of residents. I thought naively, that we should offer our mobile home park residents the same protections that we offer residents throughout the city and other rental situations. I did not know that mobile home law is very different. Specifically, mobile home law allows for a rental increase, a cap usually limited to CPI. But mobile home park law, which is state law, also allows for pass through payments by the property owner for improvements to the property. Now we can argue all day long whether what happened in the Belmont or Mobile Estates qualifies as an improvement or is deferred maintenance. But those are issues that cannot be litigated or adjudicated by the city council. Those are issues that would have to be litigated in a court of law or with an arbitrator. But at the very least, the property owner would believe that they can pass through certain payments, not just at the mobile home park in Belmont Shore, but at all mobile home parks. And there's also some question about whether the mobile home park owner can reassess the property to create a market rate as the base from which rental increases come. To me, that exposes residents throughout the city, not just in Belmont Shore, to risks that are unimaginable for them, especially when they are not requesting any change to their current situations. There are ten mobile home parks in the city of Long Beach, one in Council District three, two in Council District nine and seven in Council District eight. We have conducted outreach, outreach and meetings, and there is. These are what officially qualify as mobile home parks, according to our definition, I believe, according to the staff report. There is no desire in any other park at this time to take any action because it may result in additional risks to the tenants. There are only three parks in the city of Long Beach that are senior parks. So what has been accomplished as a result of the discussions since October? Well, I would say a lot, and I'm very proud of the accomplishments that we have made, and I'm going to go through them. The rent increases are now spread over four years, resulting in 8 to 9% increase per year. This is inclusive of improvements and pass through costs. Management has agreed at the request of the residents attorney to not raise rents beyond the legally binding amount, despite plans at Belmont Shore to conduct major improvements in the next year. In the next year, this mobile home park will receive a new clubhouse, a new pool, a new gym, a new library, a new lots of other features. And those costs will not be passed through to the residents as a part of this legally binding agreement, which to me is a win for the residents, I believe. A subsidy program was created and no resident will be displaced. I have been assured of that by the owners. I believe that. And if there is a single resident in here or you know of a resident who gets displaced as a result of income, please let me know. I guarantee you no resident will get displaced from the mobile home parks because of their financial status. Rental Assistance Program was created by the Belmont Shore Mobile Estates, and it's modeled after the Manufactured Housing Educational Trust Program, which operates now in multiple counties. But our program that we're using in Long Beach through the Belmont to our mobile estates is actually better because it doesn't have an age qualification. The Met program requires you to be 62 years old to get the subsidy. The Belmont Shore program does not require any age. Anyone can get it if they meet the financial requirement. It is not alone. Residents will never have to pay it back and a lean will not be placed on their homes. These are all things that we were able to negotiate with the property owners. Additional requests were made by the residents on by their attorney on Friday afternoon, this past Friday afternoon. Five requests were made. Three of those requests were agreed to by the mobile home park owners at my request. I spoke with them after seeing this list. I had a phone conference with them yesterday and I asked them to please identify some of those requests that they could actually meet. And out of the five, they came up with three. And I think that has made a lot of effort on their part. And one thing that I want to make clear is a decision for one park in the city of Long Beach will impact all of the parks. Not everyone may want to take the risks that are involved with a pass through laws for mobile home parks. We expect in the city of Long Beach that our landowners will work with tenants on setting rents and we expect them to be reasonable. We also expect. Fully that they will want to maintain their investments and get a return on their property. That is a reasonable concern for them and we expect that they should invest in our city with the hope that they will be able to maintain their investment. The goal of the council, should it get involved in situations like this, has always been to ensure that people are not displaced and find themselves homeless. We have accomplished that goal here. Absolutely no resident will be displaced from Belmont Shore. Mobile estates. So I ask my colleagues to support me in receiving and filing this report. I am asking that we not take any action at this time. I want to thank the residents and I want to thank the property owners for working together with us. This was a very unique situation for the city attorney and myself. We served in many ways as mediators in this process. And I think as a result of that and your engagement, we were able to make a lot of progress. I know not everyone is going to be happy, but a decision that we make today for one group of residents will apply to a larger group of residents, and some may not be as willing to take the risks as others. So thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. With that, we actually have a personal first and second. Would you please cast your vote? Yes.
Speaker 0: Motion carries.
Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft an urgency ordinance to temporarily limit mobile home space rent increases until permanent rent stabilization policy options are considered; and, direct City Manager to prepare a thorough report on long-term mobile home rent stabilization options and present recommendations on a local policy for consideration.  (Citywide)