After years of advocacy by mobilehome residents in Sunnyvale, this Tuesday the Sunnyvale City Council took action to provide rent stabilization to the city’s estimated 11,000 mobilehome tenants. The council’s action is a compromise between mobilehome residents and mobilehome park owners, who negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that caps annual rent increases, the total amount that rent can be increased when a current tenant moves out, and the amount that the park owners can charge residents for park-wide improvements. The Council also instructed city staff to begin developing a Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) that would hold parks owners accountable in case they do not enforce the new MOU.
This is a major breakthrough for Sunnyvale mobilehome residents and park owners. While councilmembers raised some concerns about the enforcement of the MOU and the forthcoming RSO, the Council’s actions have set the groundwork for important protections for mobilehome residents, who are disproportionately lower income and/or on fixed incomes in comparison to the average Sunnyvale resident.
SV@Home strongly supported the Council’s actions to provide much-needed protections to mobilehome residents in Sunnyvale. We have been supporters of the city’s prioritization of this effort since Sunnyvale first took it on last year as part of its overarching Housing Strategy. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with mobilehome residents and housing advocates in Sunnyvale to ensure that these new policies are enforced and help protect mobilehome tenants. Major thanks and kudos to the Sunnyvale City Council and City staff for all of their hard work, as well as the mobilehome residents and park owners for reaching a compromise that benefits everyone.