By Tim Sheahan President, Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League (GSMOL)
Proposition 90, the so-called “Protect Our Homes Act,” portrays itself as a measure to protect homeowners from unfair eminent domain actions, but actually is much broader in scope. For instance, Proposition 90 would enable property owners to declare “economic damages”as a result of virtually any type of governmental action,including enforcement of protective local ordinances.
Historically, the mere possibility of rent protection ordinances being implemented if rents reached unfair levels has deterred most landlords from “pushing the envelope” of fairness too far. Prop. 90 would remove that important deterrent by preventing implementation of new ordinances, giving landlords in non-regulated areas carte blanche to fearlessly raise rents sky high. Unreasonable rent increases are especially unfair for those who own homes permanently affixed to someone else’s land, a situation that exists for roughly one million residents living in manufactured home communities throughout California.
Manufactured-home (mobile home) owners often invest well over $100,000 for their homes, but rent the patch of dirt to which their homes are attached. This places them in a particularly precarious and captive situation. Already, many of these homeowners have been economically evicted from the homes they own because lot rents surpassed their monthly incomes.
Proposition 90 would make such tragedies much more common and place far more homeowners in peril than it would ever protect.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 28, 2006. Read the original PDF.