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LAKEPORT – An ordinance that sets in place regulations for the conversion of mobile home parks is set for a final public hearing before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
The hearing scheduled for next week follows an Aug. 21 public hearing by the county's Planning Commission, which is recommending the county approve a text amendment to the county's zoning ordinance that specifically looks at closure, conversion or cessation of the use of mobile home parks.
The board has discussed the ordinance before, most recently at its July 10 meeting, when the supervisors held a public hearing and passed a resolution of intent to move forward with reviewing the ordinance.
At that time, Senior Planner Penelope Shibley of the Community Development Department, who drafted the ordinance, told the board that the ordinance echoes most of state law but fine tunes gray areas.
In particular, the ordinance includes a requirement that, in cases where mobile homes can't be moved because of issues such as the age of the home, park owners must purchase the mobiles at “in-place market value” to assist residents in the relocation process.
An occupancy rate in a park of 20 percent or higher would require the park owner to sent a report to the Community Development Director explaining the vacancies, according to the ordinance.
If the empty spaces are the result of a plan to convert the park, the owner would need to apply for a use permit approved by the Planning Commission to move forward with those plans, the ordinance explains.
That application would include an impact report on the conversion to be completed, which would include detailed descriptions and information about the park's mobile homes. The ordinance also requires that the report include an analysis of the estimated costs of moving mobile homes and personal property to comparable parks.
Shibley told Lake County News that mobile home parks represent a significant housing inventory for the county.
About 100 mobile home parks are located in Lake County's unincorporated areas – not counting the cities of Lakeport and Clearlake – with about 2,000 mobile home spaces, Shibley said. She added that some of those parks are mixed use, and include RV spaces.
Shibley said that Supervisors Anthony Farrington – who sits on the Mobile Home Task Force – and Denise Rushing asked Community Development to create the ordinance out of concerns over some recent park closures.
“We have one in particular that's been a bit of a contentious project, which has been the Nice Holiday Harbor,” said Shibley.
“The owners want to convert and sell to a developer to do a resort,” she explained.
The residents were evicted, but three remain and are fighting the eviction proceedings, said Shibley, including 82-year-old Virginia Mayo.
Mayo told the Board of Supervisors July 10 that she has lived in the park for 23 years, has a monthly income of $876, no savings and has put an estimated $30,000 in improvements in her mobile home over the years.
“Right now, I don't know where to go or what to do,” Mayo said.
She can't move her older mobile home because county ordinances won't allow mobiles of that age to be relocated, she said.
Shibley said there are other parks that, through attrition, have lost their tenants and not replaced them, but she added they haven't seen aggressive conversions outside of Holiday Harbor.
“There hasn't been a study done on how many parks have been vacated,” she said.
There also are cases such as Lake Village Estates in Clearlake Oaks. A representative told the Board of Supervisors July 10 that the 44-acre park has no intentions of converting, and actually plans to expand from 159 spaces to 282.
The hearing will take place at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors' chambers in the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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