The issue
We own the home. Not the ground.
We are not renters. We are homeowners. Protecting these homes and homeowners matters to the entire city of Encinitas.
How a manufactured home park works
Residents buy their homes, often for cash and often with their life savings. They then pay the park a monthly space fee for the patch of ground the home sits on.
It is meant to be a partnership between two investors: the resident brings the home, and the park owner brings the land. For years in Encinitas, increases in the space fee roughly followed the cost of living, and residents bought in expecting that to continue.
That has changed. Increases now come every year, they are much higher than inflation, and they are set at the park owner’s sole discretion. See the numbers →
Why residents can’t just move
The home can’t practically move
Once installed, the vast majority of manufactured homes are never moved again (U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). Residents know of no relocation market for an older home and no coastal North County park that would accept one.
Every increase lowers the home’s value
A buyer prices the space fee into what they will pay. By the industry’s own rule of thumb, each $350-a-month increase takes roughly $35,000 off the value of a home.
Selling doesn’t reset the clock
The space fee is reset upward for each new buyer, so homes sit unsold. Some residents have had to sell to the park itself for far less than the home was worth.
There is nowhere cheaper to go
The average Social Security retirement benefit is about $2,071 a month. The average one-bedroom apartment in Encinitas rents for about $2,691.
Sources: residents’ accounts and listing records; Social Security Administration (Jan. 2026); RentCafe Encinitas market data (Aug. 2026).
“We don’t begrudge the owners a healthy return on an investment made decades ago. What we object to is that we are a captive market: they can set any space fee they like, and if we can’t pay it, our choice is to give the home to the park or sell it for a fraction of its value to the next buyer, who then faces the same increases.”
SOS Encinitas
Who lives in the parks
Working families, tradespeople, small-business owners, veterans, caregivers and retirees. This is not only a seniors’ issue: most Encinitas parks, including Riviera in Leucadia, are all-ages communities.
Many residents have lived in their homes for twenty or thirty years. Some are newer buyers who chose a manufactured home as the one way to own a home in Encinitas. What they share is that most of their savings are in a home they cannot move.
The gap in the law
Many people assume state law protects these homeowners. It doesn’t.
The statewide rent cap excludes us
California’s rent cap (AB 1482) “shall not apply to a homeowner of a mobilehome.”
The one manufactured home cap doesn’t reach Encinitas
The state’s manufactured home cap covers only parks that sit in two or more cities. No Encinitas park qualifies, and the law expressly leaves cities free to adopt their own ordinance.
Cities have more power here, not less
The Costa-Hawkins Act, which limits apartment rent rules, excludes manufactured home park owners. A city may keep the fee with the space when a home is sold.
The old lease loophole is gone
Long-term leases used to escape local ordinances. That exemption was repealed effective January 1, 2025, so an ordinance adopted now reaches every space.
No statewide fix is coming: recent bills (AB 1035, AB 2778 and AB 1128) have not produced a general space-fee cap. Protection, if it comes, has to come from the City of Encinitas.
Why it matters to all of Encinitas
Encinitas already has unsubsidized affordable housing it never had to build. The task now is to preserve it.
- The City’s own Housing Element calls manufactured homes “an affordable housing option for low and moderate income households.”
- Housing Element Policy 1.6 commits the City to “encourage retention of all existing mobile home parks to the extent permitted by applicable state law.”
- Since 2013 the City has funded rehabilitation of 42 manufactured homes, against 6 single-family homes. It already treats these homes as affordable housing.
- In 1990, manufactured home and trailer spaces were the single largest housing type along the North 101 Corridor: 602 of 1,256 units.
- Every space-fee increase is money a household no longer spends at Encinitas shops, restaurants and farmers markets.
Sources: Encinitas 6th Cycle Housing Element and Appendix B; North 101 Corridor Specific Plan, Ch. 8.
When a park is emptied by price rather than by closure, the state’s closure protections never apply, because those protections only help people still living there. And once these homes are gone, the City could not replace them at any price.
What “fair” means here
We are not asking for a subsidy, and we are not asking the City to set anyone’s profit. We are asking for a fairness ordinance: clear, predictable limits on space-fee increases, a guaranteed fair return for every park owner, and an independent hearing for anyone who believes the rules are unfair to them.
Roughly 100 California cities and counties already do this, including Oceanside, Escondido, Chula Vista and Santee here in San Diego County.