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� r MHeT Manufacture uoational May 1, 2020 Sent via email to: Mayor Miguel Pulido Members of the City Council 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, California 92701 w Western M Manufactured i t Plssociltion ecomment(cr�santa-ana o Housing Communities RE: May 5, 2020 Agenda Item 60-A Administrative Matters —Executive Orders Honorable Mayor and Members of the Council: The thousands of mobile home park owner members of the Manufactured Housing Educational Trust (MHET) and the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association (WMA) are joining together with the owners of the city's twenty-nine mobile home park communities to share our concerns over the City Manager's recent Executive Order freezing increases of rents on all rental units in the City of Santa Ana. The day after the Executive Order, we expressed concern to City Manager Kristine Ridge asking how a rent increase freeze could legally interfere with existing lease contracts between park owners and their residents. These contracts spell out the time and amount of annual increases. We appreciate that we were provided with a response that explained long term lease agreements were not subject to the rent freeze. However, we still have concerns with the rent increase freeze order on all units in the City and want to be very clear that we object to any form of rent control including the rent increase freeze. The council has addressed this issue many times over recent years and has consistently rejected rent control. Instead, need based rental assistance programs funded by both private property owners and the City are being used to help qualified low-income renters in need. We understand that these are unusual times with many renters, homeowners and business owners experiencing dramatic loss of income due to government -imposed measures to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Included in those measures are protections for renters with prohibitions on evictions and rent deferment for those impacted by COVID-19. Mobile home park owners are working with their residents to go above and beyond the letter and spirit of the emergency regulations in providing help and support for their tenants who have been negatively impacted. In addition, the City of Santa Ana has done an extraordinary job in joining with the State and Federal government to mobilized unprecedented resources and services to assist their residents who are in need. This is not the time to impose unfair and unreasonable regulations against the business owners in your city who provide housing for your residents. They are suffering, too with losses of income. t\