Davis Working To Protect Mobile Homes From Bay Area Price Creep

DAVIS (CBS13) — The Davis City Council is moving to protect mobile home park owners.

Over the past several years, mobile home parks in the Bay Area have been sold for prime real estate, pricing out many homeowners. Council members say they worry that trend could creep up to the Sacramento region.

The city of Davis has four mobile parks where about 1,000 people live. The historic Slatter Court Mobile Home Park in Davis, has been home to the Mason family for the past three years.

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"It's a really affordable place to live, so my kids can go to a really good school. It's very important to us and that's why we live here," Mason said.

A Bay Area transplant who was priced out of her first home, Mason worries it could happen again.

"You can see downtown a lot of things are being bought up and stores are closing," she said.

New apartment complexes are expected to go up around the city over the next few years, including one right next to Mason's home. New housing, coupled with a Bay Area trend where mobile home parks are being bought out and converted into high-cost living, has the city on edge.

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"Housing prices keep going up up up, land values keep going up up up; there's a real fear out there," said Davis City Councilman Lucas Frerichs.

Over the past year, the council and officials have been working on a new ordinance to help protect mobile home park residents. Frerichs says land owners who want to sell and convert the property would have to pay residents a relocation fee. He says the city is working to create business incentives to keep landowners from cashing out, and even considering implementing rent control.

"We are essentially putting some disincentives in place for any type of conversion," Frerichs said.

"It's always a fear," said Edna Evan, who owns a mobile home park in Folsom.

She says she'd never sell her park to make a profit, but her worry lies with the next generation.

"Who knows if families are gonna keep them, because large corporations are getting into this industry," Evans added.

Evans says mobile home parks across the Sacramento region have never been sold and converted to prime real estate, yet. Sacramento County is currently home to more than 300 mobile home parks.

While there aren't any proposals to convert the parks in Davis, Mason is dreading the day she may have to pluck her family up, and move again.

"I love our neighborhood it's just so great, like a big extended family."

It'll take up to a year to draft and finalize the terms of the ordinance. Council members say their goal is to keep mobile home park residents from being priced out.