Why this matters
In Encinitas, no one was considering a law protecting manufactured home park residents from drastic rent increases. Then residents hit with a 17% increase banded together.
Two years ago, April Franklin was newly retired and living on Social Security. She saw her new home in Riviera Mobile Home Park in Encinitas as an investment she could sell to afford assisted living when she got older.
Then the managers at the park began drastically raising the rent for residents, leaving them struggling to afford staying in their homes or to sell them to buyers who worried about higher costs of their own.
“I can enjoy my home today, but it completely changes my future,” Franklin said of the rent hikes.
When residents bought their homes in the 166-space Riviera Mobile Home Park, they say they were told that the monthly fee for the land would increase only modestly with inflation. That was true until it wasn’t.
That’s because in Encinitas, there’s no law protecting mobile homeowners from rent increases.
But that could change soon.
On Wednesday, the Encinitas City Council voted unanimously to direct staff to draft an emergency ordinance the council could consider in two weeks that would manage the rent at mobile home parks, as well as to create a long-term rent stabilization ordinance and a local review board to oversee it.
It is still too early to say exactly what the ordinance would look like, but it could set a cap on how much management can raise the rent each year.
Deputy Mayor Jim O’Hara made the motion.
“Mobile homes aren’t just a place where people live,” O’Hara said. “They’re part of our culture in Encinitas. They’re back to our surf days. They’re a place where our neighbors live. They’re a place where it’s eclectic, like the city itself.”
The unsettling prospect of a 17% increase
The Riviera Mobile Home Park is one of 11 manufactured home parks in Encinitas where residents own the homes but rent the land at the park.
With homes selling for a few hundred thousand dollars as opposed to the millions that many Encinitas homes go for these days, they are considered some of the last naturally occurring affordable housing available in the city.
Without protections, they are becoming less and less affordable.
A few years ago, Riviera Mobile Home Park resident Eva Bueno’s rent increases jumped from around 2% to a less manageable 10% year after year.
She was told she’d get a 12.5% rent increase come November, which would make her rent up by $350 each month. For other people, it was 17%.
“They can do whatever they want,” Bueno said. “This is the Wild West of real estate.”
After failed attempts to approach park management, Bueno got her neighbors together and they formed Save our Space Encinitas, or SOS Encinitas, in January.
The group started posting their stories online and calling for a rent moratorium. They met with current City Council members and candidates, and they got Mayor Bruce Ehlers to put the issue on the City Council agenda Wednesday to discuss what city officials could do.
Then, hours before the residents were going to share their concerns at the City Council meeting on Wednesday, they got a letter from park management walking back the 17% increase to a 4% one.
Management wrote that it regretted the “unforced error.”
“While it is important to note that we did not do anything outside of what the law allows, what we did not do well was explain our intentions to mainly equalize rents on a very small portion of the community,” the letter reads.
It adds that “we will be working diligently to establish a task force of local park owners, park residents and the appropriate City officials to develop a fair and equitable path forward.”
On Wednesday, Ralph Beatty, the managing director of Laguna Asset Management, which manages the park, addressed the City Council.
“We didn’t handle it properly, and as a result, we underestimated the impact,” he said. “It’s affected our other residents, which was never our intention.”
But it was too late. The potential increase had started a movement. When they spoke Wednesday, the residents told the City Council that the rolled-back rent increase did little to ease their concerns about an unpredictable future.
They said they wanted a law on the books to stop it from happening again.
“An ordinance isn’t punishment,” resident Heidi Holzworth said. “It’s a regulation to make things stay fair.”
‘Last bastion of affordable housing’
Mayor Ehlers said that the city’s 1989 general plan indicates the city’s intent to preserve the city’s mobile home parks as naturally occurring affordable housing. Yet in California it is not among more than 100 cities and counties that have some sort of rental cap ordinance for mobile home parks. Oceanside caps rental increases at the lesser of 8% or 75% of the Consumer Price Index increase. In 2026, that’s an allowed increase of 2.85%.
Chula Vista, Escondido, National City, San Marcos and Santee have varying ordinances regulating annual rent increases and rent changes when a home is sold.
Statewide, the Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League has advocated on behalf of people living in manufactured homes.
Representatives told inewsource that drastic rent increases have become more common in the past five years or so with more parks now owned by investors as opposed to “mom-and-pop” businesses of the past.
In one example, Laguna-based Laguna Asset Management, which operates Riviera Mobile Home Park, operates dozens of manufactured home communities in Arizona, California, Nevada and Oregon.
Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League Vice President Jodi Johnson said it is critical to protect manufactured home parks from exploitation.
“This is truly the last bastion of unsubsidized affordable housing,” Johnson said.
Can’t stay, can’t sell
The rent increases at Riviera Mobile Home Park leave an already vulnerable group of residents — including families, veterans, disabled individuals and retired people on fixed incomes — at risk of being unable to afford staying there. Some people have said they are at risk of homelessness.
“The bulk, the residents that have been here the longest, I don’t want to say they’re in a panic, but they’re close,” Holzworth said.
As hard as it can be to pay high rents, it can be even harder to sell in such a climate.
After going through a divorce, Bueno tried to sell her home, but she gave up after five months.
The higher monthly fees meant she needed to lower the price of her home to make it attractive to buyers. Not to mention that monthly fees increase each time there’s a new buyer.
Bueno said when her neighbor sold, it took eight months and a 26% price cut.
“There’s no way a buyer is going to want to take on unpredictable housing costs, unless I heavily discount it,” she said. “And I don’t want to walk away from my investment.”
Resident Gina Gennette said many people in the park have been afraid to speak out because they worry about retaliation. She said that’s a reason they need to stick together.
“Together we’re better,” she said.
