Bay Area mobile home park residents worried about unintended effects of new housing law

By John Ramos

One of California’s new housing laws, Senate Bill 79, is carrying unintended consequences that have Sunnyvale mobile home park residents worried they could lose their homes.

Gail Rubino is a mobile home activist who has been fighting to keep rents affordable, and when she heard about the passage of SB 79, which would allow new large-scale developments within half a mile of a passenger rail station, she knew she had to act.

“My reaction? ‘Whoops. Somebody goofed,'” she said.

In Sunnyvale, there are seven mobile home parks close to the VTA light rail line. Rubino lives in the El Dorado mobile home park, just a few blocks from the Fair Oaks VTA station, meaning under SB 79, the landowners have a right to redevelop the property for a huge new housing complex if they want to.

“There is the possibility that the mobile home park owners would want to sell the land, and have it redeveloped into, you know, a nine-story building if it’s within half a mile of transit,” Rubino said. “Those people are already there, and they own their homes. And it’s already an affordable place to live. So, putting something there that replaces that that’s the same kind of housing is kind of goofy.”

And regardless of the low cost of the mobile homes, Rubino said the state only considers properties “affordable” if they received some kind of public subsidy, even if they cost a million dollars each to build, and the mobile homes are not publicly subsidized.

So, mobile home residents are scared by just the possibility of being displaced.

“In Sunnyvale, it’s potentially 2,100 homes,” Rubino said. “So, that’s, what, four to five thousand people. Where are they going to live? It’s really disastrous for that group of people.”

No one intended this to happen, and lawmakers are now scrambling to amend SB 79 to exempt mobile home parks. Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, who represents Sunnyvale, said more thought needs to be put into this rush to build more housing.

“Common sense is not always very common in Sacramento,” he said. “And we need to actually focus on new legislation that balances those tenant protections while also trying to build housing. That is the inconvenient truth of the affordability laws that we are constantly introducing in Sacramento, is that they’re butting up against something else. And we need to just get in the room and figure this out, so we don’t have unintended consequences of displacement.”

SB 79 only applies in counties with at least 15 passenger rail stations. In the Bay Area, that includes San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda. Contra Costa is exempt because it only has 14 BART stations. There are already promises from Sacramento that a fix will be made regarding the mobile home parks, but Rubino isn’t taking anything for granted.

“Well, you know,” she said, “I’m not going to fall asleep on this thing.  I’m going to watch it like a hen watches the baby chickens.”