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Honorable Mayor and City Council Persons City of Santa Ana Hearing: October 4, 2022; Item: 25 September 30, 2022 Page 3 of 11 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN Equal Protection In the most recent City presentation, the City refers owners and landlords to their own legal counsel, saying "we are not attorneys, we cannot give legal advice." This effectively deprives owners and landlords with the City's interpretation of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and Just Cause Eviction Ordinance —effectively refusing to respond to owners and landlords, while responding to residents' questions.3 However, they include and provide counsel to residents —including both with City staff and guest speaker attorneys, and even solicit resident complaints about enforcement. Procedural Due Process Further, the owners of mobilehome parks are not being provided equal protection under the law in the composition of the Rental Housing Board. The Staff Report outlines the RSG's Long -Term Implementation Plan and includes four options for the composition of the Board. Of note, of the proposed compositions, only Options I and 4 allow for parity between the composition of tenant representation and owner representation. Each option expressly calls out that one of the tenant representatives to be from a mobilehomes parks; but none of the options call out that one of the owner representatives should be from the ownership/management of a mobilehome park. The end result is that of the 30 mobilehome parks within the City, the residents will have a representative on the RSG board, but the park owners who represent over 3900 mobilehome spaces will have no representation. Given the uniqueness of mobilehome park laws, operations and issues, both sides, tenants and park owners/operators should have equal representation on the Board, and other jurisdictions typically provide a separate rent board specifically for mobilehome rent review.4 DEFINITIONS In review of the Definition section leading into the newly proposed and combined RS/JCE Ordinance, the following comments and recommendations are made to eliminate the conflicts with California existing law as they relate to mobilehome parks, reduce the potential for taking of private property, and eliminate vagueness and confusion: A. Section 8-3102 — Definitions: "Rent" — the definition of rent is vague and ambiguous and conflicts with and is preempted by the Mobilehome Residency Law, Civil Code § 798 et seq in that (i) utilities are expressly governed and billed by mobilehome park owners under the Mobilehome Residency Law, (ii) incidental service charges, including charges for items such as rental of extra parking space, or for the park owner to perform services to the tenant, are governed by the Mobilehome Residency Law and are not and should not be considered "rent", (iii) many utilities in mobilehome parks are separately billed (either through metering services or through proportionate share of the cost) by the mobilehome park owner to the tenant and such should not be considered rent that is capped in its increases; and (iv) laws applicable to mobilehome parks expressly provide for the pass through of certain charges and expenditures such as 'See Screenshot Attached as Attachment A; 4 See, e.g. Chula Vista Municipal Code Chapter 2.31: "Mobilehome Rent Review Commission." Kingsley — 426 Santa Ana Ordinances