Riverside’s Housing and Homelessness Committee Monday moved forward with researching possible updates of its mobile home park rent stabilization rules to clarify which fees could be passed down to tenants and restrict rent increases for certain lease transfers. Councilmember Sean Mill, who serves on the committee, was absent.
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“The annual review is important, especially right now at this moment of time, because the cost of living has just never been as high as it has before,” Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who serves on the committee, said at the September 28 meeting. “Unfortunately, that then puts it on us at the local level to have to figure out how we help to serve members of our community, so that we don’t further see folks fall into homelessness or becoming unhoused.”
Last year, the Riverside City Council updated the city’s mobile home rent stabilization ordinance, adopting seven of nine potential amendments, to require a rent cap and floor, tenant notification and annual registration.
As part of that February 4, 2025, discussion, Councilmember Steve Hemenway asked that the committee further review the two unadopted recommendations. One of the recommendations would have restricted rent increases when leases are transferred to immediate family members, as long as they remain in the same space. The other sought to clarify which additional fees, usually for routine maintenance, could be passed onto the tenants through their monthly bill.
At last month’s committee meeting, Councilmember Luis Hernandez requested that those two items come back as part of the annual review of the rent stabilization ordinance.
The discussion came a week after the council approved a rent increase of up to 2.56% for mobile home parks next year.
Representatives for mobile home park owners said they opposed any new amendments to the ordinance. Some said they saw no need to revise the ordinance so soon after the council’s most recently approved changes. Others said the ordinance, with last year’s amendments, already struck a balance to both protect tenants and allow park owners to sustain their businesses.
“We have to have the ability to raise the rent when the homes turn over, and we have to have the ability to have capital improvement pass-throughs for legitimate capital improvements,” Marilyn Green, a representative for the Riverside Meadows mobile home park, said. “Our costs for regular maintenance, as has already been said, has been going up more than 80% of the [consumer price index], as everyone else’s as well, so I don’t see any reason why we need to make another amendment to the ordinance that was just amended one year ago.”
Tenant advocates said the proposed amendments, if voted on by the council, would help families remain in the park without sharp increases and ensure transparency on monthly bill add-ons being passed onto the tenants.
Mobile home park owners are able to charge tenants for routine maintenance fees, according to California civil code. The city’s code, however, does not allow for owners to charge fees for improvements that add to the property’s value unless first voted on by the majority of tenants.
Maribel Nuñez, executive director for the Inland Equity Community Land Trust, said during the meeting that owners have started labeling capital improvement projects as routine maintenance in an effort to avoid having to obtain a majority vote.
“Just hearing from folks, there’s a lot of issues of [non]transparency,” Nuñez said. “That’s why they don’t want to put capital improvement [on bills], because they know that with the new ordinance it’s going to require that 51% vote.”
Ultimately, Hernandez and Cervantes both supported possible amendments to the ordinance to allow families to take over leases without rent increases and called for clearer definitions to differentiate between capital improvements and routine maintenance. Hernandez also directed staff to prepare a report for the full council to discuss before the end of November.
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