The San Luis Obispo City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to advance changes to the city's mobile home rent stabilization ordinance. The city is moving forward with new protections that are meant to prevent steep rent increases for some mobile home owners when they sell their homes.
Mobile home residents typically own their homes but pay rent for the spaces where those homes are located.
Under the proposed changes, park owners generally would not be able to increase the space-rent by more than 10% when a mobile home changes ownership. The changes are aimed at closing a gap in the city's existing protections. They would not alter annual rent increases already negotiated under leases signed before July 2, 2026.
City officials said some residents with older leases have faced substantial increases in spacerent when trying to sell their homes, making it more difficult to find buyers and reducing the value of their properties.
"Sometimes these rent increases were in excess of 200%," Deputy City Attorney Sadie Symens told the council. "And understandably, these extreme space rent increases adversely affected their ability to sell their homes to otherwise qualified buyers and significantly reduce the value of their homes."
Councilmember Emily Francis said mobile homes remain an important source of housing in San Luis Obispo and that the city has heard concerns about how the current system has affected residents.
"This is an incredibly important source of housing in our community, and I know it's also been an area where we've heard a lot about some abuses of the system," Francis said. "And we want to make sure that that doesn't happen again in the future."
Some council members described the changes as an incremental step toward preserving mobile homes as a more affordable housing option in a city where housing costs remain high.
The ordinance will return to the San Luis Obispo City Council for final adoption.
