LAKEPORT — An ordinance that would alleviate some of the troubles facing mobile home park residents goes before the county Planning Commission Thursday morning. And after sending the ordinance back to the mobile home task force earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors will hear it again in July.
The problem this ordinance addresses is land use conversion. “We own our homes but we do not own the land upon which it sits,” explained Anita Sombs, a resident of Sterling Shores Mobile Home Park in North Lakeport off of Robin Hill Drive, and a member of the Mobile Home Task Force. “We are unable to move our homes because they are old or expensive to move, and even if we could move them, there”s no place to move them to. Without rent control, there”s nothing we can do to protect ourselves because the owners can raise the rent whenever they want to.”
The “conversion ordinance,” as it has been called, recently went before the Board of Supervisors and was kicked back down to the task force for revision. It would require “relocation and other assistance” be provided to homeowners who might be displaced when a mobile home park closes or is converted to another use.
Sombs commented, “The mobile home owners, under this ordinance, would have to be reimbursed for the market value of the home in place if it can”t be moved.” She further noted a need for reimbursement for moving costs and time spent in a hotel looking for another park.
Sombs may be facing such a quandary herself soon, as she said Sterling Shores was sold last week.
The ordinance will go before the Planning Commission Thursday morning at 10 a.m. for a public hearing in county Board of Supervisors chambers in the Lake County Courthouse in downtown Lakeport.
Its next appearance before the county supervisors is slated for July 10 at 1:30 p.m.
The Mobile Home Task Force will take up discussion of a long-term lease that has met with some resistance on the part of mobile home dwellers. Sombs said a hot button item of the lease would be pass-throughs, which would allow mobile home park owners to attach certain maintenance costs to a leasee”s rent. The task force will meet next on July 9 at 10 a.m. at Lakeport City Hall.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
