Running a campaign for mobile home park rent protections from her Huntington Beach living room was not on Carol Rohr’s retirement bucket list. Travel and kayak excursions are more this 65-year-old’s speed.
But Rohr now spends up to 12 hours a day working to get rent stabilization for mobile home parks on the city’s November ballot — reading city handbooks, canvassing the neighborhood, and meeting with City Council members. She’s become the president of the homeowners association at Skandia Mobile Country Club where she lives.
“I had no clue when I stepped up for this, that it was going to be what it was going to be,” Rohr says.
It all started in August 2021 when corporate real estate owner Investment Property Group bought the family-owned Skandia mobile home park. Soon IPG announced rents would increase $225 over the next three years to cover a more than tenfold increase in property taxes when the land was transferred to them…
…Big investors make that profit by raising rents, says Jerry Rioux, a consultant working with the California Housing Partnership and a tenants rights advocate. Rioux says California’s tight housing market allows large investors to make a “fairly safe and significant profit by buying mobile home parks in California.”
He adds, “It’s all they care about. If they can make more money, they’ll do it legally. And they’ll push the envelope.”