WILLITS, CA., 4/23/18 — Residents of two Willits area mobile home parks will be staging a rent-hike protest at the park across from Willits City Hall (Bud Snider Park), at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. The residents of park complain that rents have risen dramatically, and capricious fees have been billed, since new owners took control. They also allege a pattern of harassment from the new management. To this end the residents have organized and begun to push for a rent stabilization law in Willits, modeled after a law that has been on the books for years in Ukiah.
Protests were also held at the park on April 11, the videos of which are embedded at the bottom of this article.
A flyer being circulated to announce the protest ends with the plea, “Help us not become homeless!!![sic]”
Early last summer the ownership of two parks, Wagon Wheel Mobile Home Park in the City of Willits and Valley Oaks Mobile Home Park in the unincorporated part of the Little Lake Valley, were sold to a company controlled by Flyer’s Energy, which owns the gas station chain. Public records show that a small tangle of limited liability companies were created to hold the properties, and a management company Boavida was also created.
Boavida is the company that directly interacts with the residents, and is reference in most of the signs in this video. The videos were filmed, by our reporter Kate Maxwell:
Part I
Part II
Adrian Fernandez Baumann, editor@mendovoice.com
I understand that people are angry about rent raises, but I don’t think that justifies calling the new managers “greedy rich pigs.”
Also, did anyone mention the condition of the mobile home park a couple years ago? I heard someone mention that the previous condition of the park was atrocious. For instance, there was sewage backing up in the laundromat (which made it so people couldn’t do laundry for months), there were people hanging around the park dealing drugs in broad daylight, there was trash strewn everywhere, and there were several instances in which different dogs were loose without attention from an owner. I don’t know if the new owners are just trying to make things better than that and they have to raise the rent because they can’t absorb the addition cost, or if there is a level of avarice involved (due to the housing shortage, and landowners taking advantage of peoples’ desperate situations), but it would be something worth looking into imho.
That aside, rent control could also be beneficial for the area. These are my thoughts.
Thanks MV!
Oh..maybe crooks would better describe ri h people who take money from the poor..they DONT CARE what the park looks like as long as they get their money!
Oasis MHP in Desert Hot Springs,CA also get hit with annual Rent Increases too. My Biggest Beef with them is their rundown conditions yet they do nothing to improve and raise the rents. Well, a new poor quality of paint job. What about the sewer system is from 1955, the water plumbing is from 1976, the electric is 44 years old. All structures are failing. Again, rent increases are ok with me, but fix the parks structures.