From:
To: City Council
Subject: Rent control for Fircrest Mobile Home Park
Date: Tuesday, August 29, 2023 11:15:41 AM
Sebastopol City Council
7120 Bodega Avenue
Sebastopol, CA 95472
Dear City Council Members:
We live in Fircrest Senior Mobile Home Park. We have lived here for 5 years and have enjoyed this community and its affordability, although through the time I have been here there has been little done for the infrastructure of the park. The fences are falling down with cables and wires running across them. The roads need work, the only road improvements have been due to one of our elderly residents tripping and falling causing a long hospital stay and ultimately a relocation to a care home. There are also (multiple ) electric posts on each property that are no longer being used , wether or not they have been decommissioned and no longer are live no one knows. This is a potential hazard/liability. The only improvements have been made since Nancy Bean became our manager. She has also lived here as a resident for years and understands the parks infrastructure needs but even then the park had not been previously maintained.
As you know, residents here own their homes and rent the spaces they sit on. Rents here increase every year based on the rate of inflation.
We are seniors on a fixed income and I’m concerned that we will eventually be priced out of our home, especially if inflation continues as it has in the past year or two.
We have lived in Sonoma County for 52 years and have worked , raised our children and contributed to the community. My children and grandchildren live here and at this point of my life I need to be close to family. We don’t know where else we could afford to live in Sonoma County or anywhere in California for that matter.
Please help retain the affordability of Fircrest Senior Mobile Home Park by amending the Rent Stabilization Ordinance to limit annual rent increases to no more than 70% of the Bay Area Consumer Price Index with a cap of 4%. Several other jurisdictions in the County have already made this type of adjustment.
Currently, FMHP Owners cannot raise rent when a mobile home is sold. I urge you to keep it that way. There are not many affordable options for seniors on fixed incomes in Sebastopol.
Allowing rents to go up with each change in ownership will eventually cause Fircrest Mobile Home Park to become unaffordable as well.
To sum up, I urge you to amend the current RSO to allow annual space rent increases of 70% of the Bay Area CPI up to a maximum of 4% whichever is less. I also urge you to keep in place
the Vacancy Control we have had in our current ordinance since 1994.
Sincerely,
Philip and Teresa Saluzzo