Carson’s Development Dream Never Included Affordable Housing

Contrary to what electeds in Carson are saying, affordable housing unaffordability in Carson’s development vision is a feature rather than a bug.

According to research conducted by the Urban Development Project led by UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto, the only tool the City of Carson has to protect affordable housing is the mobile home park rent control ordinance. The team reported in 2018 that the city did not have among other protections:

• Just cause eviction ordinance
• Rent control/stabilization
• Rent review boards and/or mediation
• Single-room occupancy preservation
• Condominium conversion regulations
• Below market rate housing
• Foreclosure assistance
• Community land trusts
• Housing trust fund

The one spot where the city fought to protect housing affordability was its passing of a mobile home park rent control ordinance that made it extremely difficult to raise rents. Park owners challenged the ordinance all the way to the Supreme Court and lost.

News articles during this period reveal that the elected at the time viewed mobile park residents as transient rather than actual residents. This only changed, somewhat, when park residents organized and began actively participating in city elections. But that did not keep the mobile home park owners from continually suing the city over rent control. 

One of the primary features of the ordinance was that each park had to apply for rent increases rather than it be applied to all the parks collectively. The park owners fought this ordinance and thought courts would side with them. They were mistaken. 

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Carson formed a 15-member rent control review board to adjudicate requests for rent increases. Sometimes they were granted. Sometimes not. If the rent hikes were granted, the hike would be less than what the park owners requested. The rental control board was cut to seven members by more conservative Carson city council majorities. And the members that ended up on the rent control boards were often mobile home park owners.

Until 2018, the City of Carson had one of the strongest mobile home park rent control ordinances in California.

But years of litigious pressure brought by the eccentric mobile home park millionaire, James Goldstein, caused the city to stop defending the ordinance due in large part to a financial crisis after being sued dozens of times over a period of 30 years.

The amended ordinance granted an annual increase of 75% of the difference in the Consumer Price Index from the date of the last rent increase. The ordinance also includes an 8% ceiling and no floor.

Though Carson’s rent control ordinance has been relaxed, other forces have led to the conversion of former landfills, industrial sites and mobile home parks into luxury condo and apartments.