The City Council on Monday voted to extend its interim moratorium on approvals of conversion of mobile home rental parks to resident-owned units, prompting attorneys for local mobile home park owners the Guggenheim family to file another lawsuit against the city.

“The city is trying to do whatever it can to stop the process (of conversion),” said Guggenheim attorney Richard Close, who calls the moratorium an “illegal delay on mobile home park conversions.”

The Guggenheims have had their application to convert Rancho Mobile Homes in western Goleta in process for roughly a year and a half.

The interim urgency moratorium, first enacted July 23, was in response to potential state legislation regarding mobile home parks that could give cities the ability to impose conditions over mobile home conversions, and adds provisions for local rent control. The extension gives the original 45-day moratorium another 10 months and 15 days.

According to City Attorney Julie Biggs, it’s not as cut-and-dried a situation as the park owners’ attorneys make it.

“The code that the city currently has prohibits mobile home conversions,” she said.
The city would have to amend its code to allow for conversions, but what amendments there need to be depend on the outcome of the state legislation.

“The pending legislation will have an effect on what the city needs to do,” Biggs said. “Rather than act now and act again later, the city prefers to wait.”

While the Guggenheims’ application for conversion will continue to be processed, the city will withhold approval until it can determine conformity with state law.

The Guggenheim attorneys assert that the conversion of the park is not the change in land use that would trigger a moratorium.

“There’s no physical change, no construction, and no one will be evicted,” said Close. “It’s just a change of method of ownership.”

Nor is there an urgency that would justify the moratorium, the Guggenheim lawyer said in a letter to the City Council. The park owners plan to seek damages against the city for delays to approvals of its application caused by the moratorium.

The city, however, contends that because the park is in a local coastal zone, it needs an Environmental Impact Report to study the effects the conversion might have on any displacement of low-income residents in the area, another charge that the Guggenheims are battling in court.

Because of the time it takes to perform an EIR, Biggs said, it is “quite likely” that by the time the EIR is complete, the pending legislation would also be cleared up, and the city would be able to act on the conversion. Furthermore, she said, the city could repeal its moratorium before its end date.