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Imperial Beach RV park residents will soon be protected from owners who try to skirt a state law that shields occupants from arbitrary evictions once they have lived in a park for nine months. And National City approved an agreement with mobile home park owners that limits rent increases. Gov.
Gavin Newsom last month signed Assembly Bill 1472, sponsored by Assemblymember David Alvarez, that prohibits RV park owners in Imperial Beach from requiring occupants to move out and reregister every six months, making it impossible for them to become eligible for the state protections. Under state law, park owners must have reasonable grounds to deny renewing leases. Violating park rules or missing rent payments are some examples.
The new bill, effective in January, specifies that a resident is someone who has occupied a park for at least nine months in a yearlong period. Imperial Beach RV park owners could be fined $500 for violating the law. “This bill closes a loophole that has prevented residential RV Park tenants, many of which are vulnerable and live on fixed incomes, from obtaining common tenant protections,” Alvarez said in a statement.
“At a time when our state is experiencing a deep housing affordability crisis, we should not be evicting tenants who are able to abide by all other rules including paying their monthly rent.” The law comes after repeated pleas from long-term residents of the Miramar Imperial Beach Mobile Home and RV Park to protect them from being shuffled in and out. Located on Palm Avenue, the 100-space park is one of the few remaining sources of affordable housing, not only in the small, coastal community, but across San Diego County.
Tenants claimed that park owners required them to renew their leases every six or nine months and vacate the property for at least two days every time their leases expired. If they refused, they faced eviction and those who returned to the park with a new agreement often saw rent increases. Several tenants, many with children or who are elderly and on fixed incomes, have lived there for more than a decade.
The moves caused them severe financial and mental hardships, they said. In October 2022, the Imperial Beach City Council adopted an emergency ordinance that instituted a rent cap and anti-harassment provisions and banned evictions. Officials extended the rules, but they expired in May of last year.
Rachel Orozco settled her RV at the Miramar park in 2021 with her son. She advocated for AB 1472 in Sacramento after being ordered to shuffle in and out of the park and sign new leases every six months. The first move was especially stressful.
Orozco said she had to request days off work, pay about $300 for the roundtrip move of the trailer, dispose of her food and buy takeout, as well as pay for a night at a hotel. She’s feeling thankful for the bill’s passage, but believes more could be done to protect tenants against evictions, harassment and retaliation, which she and other Miramar tenants say they still experience. “Thanks to this bill, we no longer have to move in and out and we’re really appreciative of those who voted for the bill and maybe work can be done to pass this statewide, not just in Imperial Beach,” Orozco said.
In National City, officials approved a 10-year memorandum of understanding between the city and all four mobile home park owners overseeing more than 300 spaces limiting rent increases at their properties. The agreement, effective in January 2025 and expiring in January 2035, allows rents to be increased up to 5 percent a year. A 90-day written notice must be provided to tenants ahead of rent hikes.
Owners can pass through various costs, such as property tax increases or disaster-related expenses, evenly spread out over the years to all tenants. Those costs are usually added to rent increases, but are not amortized. National City has a temporary rent control ordinance , which imposes a 5 percent rent cap for all four properties, that expires in December.
For months, the city looked at ways to establish a long-term policy to protect tenants vulnerable to unregulated rent increases, while also allowing owners to receive a reasonable return. Carlos Aguirre, the city’s Housing and Community Development director, said park owners threatened to pursue legal action “to make things right for them if we looked at extending the ordinance without considering the pass-throughs” and the city thought it fair to include them in their agreement..
