SOS Encinitas (Save Our Spaces) is the public name of the Encinitas Manufactured Home Owner's Coalition — residents from Encinitas's manufactured and mobile home parks organizing together, alongside our local GSMOL chapter, for a fair local ordinance.
The Encinitas Manufactured Home Owner's Coalition is the resident-led group doing this organizing work, park by park across Encinitas. We're also forming an Encinitas chapter of GSMOL — the Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League, the statewide organization that represents manufactured and mobile home owners in Sacramento. GSMOL membership gives residents standing, resources, and a track record other cities' ordinances have relied on.
SOS Encinitas is the public campaign identity for all of this — the name on this website (sosencinitas.org) and on our outward-facing materials. Whether you know us as the Coalition, the GSMOL chapter, or SOS Encinitas, it's the same effort.
TODO (coalition to confirm): a short paragraph here on how the coalition and the GSMOL chapter are formally organized (e.g. one steering group, shared officers) once that structure is settled.
In a manufactured or mobile home park, residents typically own their home outright but rent the space of land underneath it. Unlike an apartment renter, a homeowner in this situation can't simply move somewhere cheaper when the rent goes up — a manufactured home is expensive and difficult to relocate, and many can't be moved at all. That makes residents a captive audience.
Done fairly, this is a mutual arrangement between two investors: the resident brings the home, the park owner brings the land. What we're seeing instead, in Encinitas and elsewhere, is space rent increases that residents cannot avoid or negotiate — increases that also erode the resale value of the home itself, since a buyer has to factor in an ever-rising ground rent.
This is why we're asking the City of Encinitas for a fairness ordinance: not a subsidy, but a rebalancing of a contract that only one side can walk away from.
Our first ask of the City — and of Mayor Ehlers directly — is that a manufactured-home fairness ordinance be agendized as a Council-Initiated Item, so it can be formally discussed and voted on.
Encinitas has eleven manufactured and mobile home parks. The more residents who join GSMOL and take part — from every park, not just one — the stronger our case to the City.
Public materials from this coalition are written and shared collectively rather than under any one resident's name, so that no individual is exposed for taking part. If you're a reporter, official, or resident who wants to talk with someone directly, please use the contact page and we'll connect you.
The fastest way in, from any Encinitas manufactured or mobile home park: join our email list, come to the next meeting, or share your story.
