Bellflower’s Mobile Home Rent Control Laws Put Off

BELLFLOWER —  After hearing testimony from several senior citizens supporting rent control for Bellflower’s 45 mobile home parks, the City Council on Tuesday night voted to study two proposed measures and present its findings at the next council meeting.

About 50 residents, many of them holding signs saying “Vote for Rent Stabilization,” filed quietly out of the meeting after the council voted 3 to 2 to conduct an environmental impact report on the proposals. One is based on a Thousand Oaks rent control ordinance and the other on a proposed ordinance in Paramount that was defeated that night.

“We had hoped they would approve our own ordinance,” said mobile home resident Annabelle Silva, refering to a proposal submitted to the city last week by the Bellflower Mobile Homeowners Action Committee. “We are extremely unhappy about that.”

Committee members have complained that the ordinances proposed by the city are too vague.

Both measures restrict rent hikes to a yet unspecified percentage of the consumer price index. The major difference between the two is how increases above that percentage will be handled, Planning Director Lee Whitenberg said.

“Based on the Thousand Oaks ordinance, increases will be approved by a rent review commission appointed by the council,” Whitenberg said. “In the other (proposal), owners and tenants would have to go to a mediation committee made up of residents of that particular park and work out an agreement.”

Silva, a spokesman for the committee, which represents 22 of Bellflower’s 45 mobile home parks, said the group will meet this week to decide whether to begin circulating petitions to put their ordinance on the ballot in a June special election.