Wealthy mobile home park and apartment owners are spending millions on a deceptive campaign to pass Prop. 98 in June 2008 for their own financial gain.  These landlords want voters to believe that Proposition 98 is about eminent domain.  But their hidden agenda is to eliminate rent control and other renter protections so they can make hundreds of millions of dollars by raising rents on seniors and working families.  In fact, landlords make up for 85% of this measure’s funding. Senior and mobile home owner advocate groups like AARP, Golden State Manufactured Home Owners League, Coalition of Mobile Home Owners-California, the California Alliance for Retired Americans and many other mobile home owner associations, renters’ rights groups and seniors are waging an aggressive campaign to defeat this deceptive measure.

Unless defeated, Proposition 98 would:

• Eliminate mobile home rent control. Proposition 98 would phase out rent control in California. This would specifically phase out mobile home rent control. As soon as a mobile home is sold, the rent control protection on the spot the home sits upon would not be passed on to the next renter. As a result, Proposition 98 would jeopardize affordable housing for the thousands of seniors and widows on fixed incomes, as well as single mothers and working families who seek to live in mobile home communities.
• Destroy value of mobile homes. Because Proposition 98 would eliminate rent control as soon as the current tenant vacates the property, mobile home owners will face extreme difficulty trying to sell their units. Potential buyers will be discouraged from purchasing the mobile home because rent control protections on space will be lost when units are sold - destroying the equity and life-long investment of many seniors.
• Attack protections against forced condominium subdivision. Under Proposition 98, mobile home park owners could not be prevented by state or local governments from pursuing what are called "condo conversions". Mobile home owners typically own their mobile home, but rent the space on which it sits. Under condo conversions, park owners can force mobile home owners to buy the space on which their homes sit at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. Many mobile home owners could be stuck in a lose/lose situation - forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the land underneath their units, or tens of thousands to relocate. Unable to pay either of these costs, many seniors and low-income mobile home owners could be forced out of their homes altogether.