IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The Yucaipa City Council has left intact a rent control ordinance that applies exclusively to the city’ 42 mobile home parks.
By a 4-1 vote Monday, the council declined to change a provision in the ordinance that limits rent increases at those properties to 80 percent of the consumer price index during a one-year period, mayor pro tem Greg Bogh said.
Bogh cast the lone dissenting vote against the proposal, which would have allowed owners of mobile home parks to raise rent to 100 percent of a consumer price index based on local data.
A consumer price index measures the changes in prices in a variety of goods and services bought regularly by a typical household. Allowing a rent hike equal to the entire index would allow the property owners to keep up with inflation.
Current city regulations allow for rent hikes above the 80 percent threshold, but only when a property owner can demonstrate a need. Getting such an increase approved is difficult and takes a long time, Bogh said.
“It’s a horrible process,” said Bogh, who was first elected to the council in 2010. “I’ve sat through a few of those sessions and it’s tough on both sides. We’re always going to have some of those hearings, but if the standard is 100 percent we won’t have nearly so many. That’s why I voted the way I did.”
Monday’s vote, which did approve some minor changes to the ordinance, was part of the statute’s regular two-year review. The ordinance was passed in 1989, the year Yucaipa incorporated, Bogh said.
