LAKE FOREST : City Sets Deadline on Rent Agreement

Mobile home park owners and renters have been given 60 days to reach a compromise in their battle over rents.

What happens after that isn’t clear. But the City Council’s decision last week to set that timetable and to hire a mediator was a clear sign that the city intends to take an active role in breaking an impasse between the two sides.

“We want to make them aware that any compromise causes pain on both sides,” Councilwoman Marcia Rudolph said. “I think both groups have expressed great interest in coming to some kind of agreement. We want to be there, not as a facilitator, but as a presence so we can know what’s going on.”

The council backed the establishment of a standard lease for the parks and approved paying $2,000 for a mediator. The city will also send a council member and a staff representative to meetings between renters and park owners. A date for the first session has yet to be established.

Since September, the tenants of four mobile home parks in Lake Forest have banded to protest what they say are excessive rent hikes. The renters also want the right to sublease their mobile homes, a practice currently prohibited at the parks.

Park owners deny that uncontrolled rent increases have occurred, pointing out that many tenants have long-term leases. For the same reason, they question why a standard lease is necessary.

“I’m kind of at a loss why the city is asking us to reinvent what’s already been done,” said Vickie Talley, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Educational Trust, a group of mobile home park owners representing the Lake Forest landlords. But the group was “pleased that the council didn’t want to adopt rent control,” Talley said.

Talley also said a standard lease might present problems because “each individual park has individual needs.”

A tenant representative, Joe Lee, said most of the leases are not long-term, with most no more than three to five years originally and some expiring in less than two years.

Lee, who represents homeowners at El Toro Mobile Estates, supported the idea of a standard lease for all four parks but agreed that leases should allow for differences at each park.

Lee said he supports the council’s participation but does not expect the talks to succeed.

“It’ll be good if the owners will cooperate, but I’m not too optimistic about that. I know the council doesn’t want to pass a (rent control) ordinance because they know they’ll be sued by the owners. But I think they’re trying their best.”