Editorial: City’s answers to housing crisis could be quite limited

When the Sonoma City Council last Monday voted 5-0 to pass the first reading of the update to the city’s Mobile Home Rent Control Ordinance, it marked a notable moment for Sonoma – it was the first city-directed salvo to put any sort of check upon skyrocketing rental rates since the phrase “housing emergency” entered common parlance in the last two years.

It was a relatively easy decision for the Council. Not only were the updates from the mobile-home owners justified, they were at the behest of local residents – largely fixed-income seniors – opposed solely by a distant mobile-home park corporation with what some say is a dicey reputation for tenants’ rights. Plus, the actual rent control arrangements have been in place since 1992; the update simply included a few important tweaks – among them, that the mediation for rent adjustment applications rests with the city manager, and that not only are rent increase applications from the park owner allowed for capital improvements, but rent-decrease applications will be considered if a park isn’t maintained properly.

This is clearly a victory for the mobile-home owners, yet from a larger “housing emergency” perspective, it’s something more. It’s a micro-level vindication of two words that are being whispered louder and with much more frequency these days in Sonoma County: rent control.

While the real-estate market in Sonoma is certainly no intimation of income equality, it’s mostly been the rental rates that have caught the attention of housing advocates. Horror stories of jaw-dropping rent increases and 60-day-warning evictions elicit a similar reaction from just about everyone who hears them: How can that be allowed?

Yet, it typically is. Sadly, legal justification and moral justification aren’t always like-minded citizens. Which is precisely why big cities in the post World War II decades began instituting rent control ordinances – to place some sort of restriction (3 percent per year, let’s say) on the rising rents in urban areas that were placing retirees and the underprivileged on the brink of homelessness. San Francisco, Berkeley, New York and Los Angeles still have large percentages of renters living with pretty good deals to this day. However, rent-control critics point out that the good deals stop right there – and that rent control benefits the few who enjoy its advantages, while every other renter lives with the fall out. The basic knock on rent control is that it drives up prices by limiting supply. Folks in rent-controlled apartments tend to hold onto them, lowering availability across the board. Then there’s the theory that fewer developers want to build apartment buildings in rent-controlled districts, further adding to housing shortages.

Yet, in all the debates about rent control, few envision the fates of these cities without it. Imagine the SF Mission or Greenwich Village or West Hollywood without its artists, bohemians and eccentrics who have made them world-renowned neighborhoods, at least more so than an influx of, say, corporate attorneys or CFOs ever could.

Sonoma’s got its own legacy of free spirits, gonzo artists and other odd fellows who have helped ice the community’s reputation as a haven for outsiders. And, thankfully, it seems like their situation at the mobile home parks is relatively secure. But those residents are only a small minority of the Valley’s fixed-income folks feeling the renter squeeze.

Any further talk of rent control at this point is just that – talk. And it’s not coming from city officials. A more likely avenue for housing relief would be to increase the affordable housing stock.

The City Council last month made overtures to the Sonoma Planning Commission to set a joint session to brainstorm on the issue and identify available or city owned lots that could be considered for future development. But in a city that’s less than 3 square miles in area, there’s not going to be a lot of it.

And then there’s the third alternative that many are thinking, but few want to say out loud: that there may not be much that the city can really do about it.

And that – not rent control or a low-income-housing development on your street – is the truly frightening aspect of the housing emergency.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.