Camarillo's Mobile home Residents Are Paying the Highest Land Rents in Ventura County. A Vote Was Supposed to Change That. It Didn't.

Camarillo has three mobile home parks. Nearly 500 residents live in them. Many are seniors on fixed incomes who own their homes outright but rent the land beneath them from a private park owner.

For years, that arrangement worked. But complaints about rent increases started reaching City Hall in early 2025, and what followed was more than a year of research, subcommittee meetings, and public debate. Residents packed Wednesday night's City Council meeting expecting a final vote on a permanent Mobile home Land Rent Stabilization Ordinance.

They left without one.

The Council sent the ordinance back to committee for further revisions, with the mayor acknowledging that residents "probably hoped for and expected a quick resolution." The temporary moratorium currently capping increases at 4.2% expires April 20. What happens between now and when the revised ordinance returns to Council is an open question.

The numbers behind the push for an ordinance tell a clear story.

According to city staff analysis of Zillow listing data, the move-in land rents at Camarillo's two largest parks are the highest of any rental mobile home park in all of Ventura County. Both Lamplighter Mobile Home Park and Camarillo Mobile Home Estates are owned by Investment Property Group.

New residents moving into either park face move-in land rents of roughly $2,060 and $2,050 per month respectively. The average move-in rent across all rent-stabilized parks in the county is around $829 per month. Casa Del Norte, Camarillo's third park managed by Star Management, sits at $1,500 per month. That's lower than the other two, but still higher than every rent-stabilized park in the county.

The gap didn't happen overnight. Staff analyzed rent history at Lamplighter going back to 2016. Over that nine-year period, the average annual rent increase at the park was 5.47%, compared to an average CPI increase of 3.47% over the same period. Move-in rent at the park climbed from $1,275 to $2,060.

The proposed ordinance would cap annual land rent increases at the Consumer Price Index, with a floor of 2% and a ceiling of 6%. Park owners could still seek additional increases for capital improvements or to demonstrate a need for a fair rate of return, but those would go through a formal arbitration process paid for by the city.

The ordinance also included vacancy control, meaning rents could only increase by up to 6% when a space changes hands. That provision turned out to be the sticking point.

Councilmember Tony Tremblay made clear he supports a rent stabilization ordinance in principle but said the vacancy control provision as written is "a major flaw."

His concern: the 6% cap on rent when a space changes hands is more restrictive than what cities like Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks have adopted. In both those cities, if a mobile home is sold but stays on the same space, the park owner can raise rent up to 10%. If the home is removed and a new tenant brings in a different home, there is no cap at all. The draft Camarillo ordinance would cap increases at 6% in either scenario.

Tremblay argued that strict vacancy control reduces the park owner's ability to keep pace with rising costs and, over time, discourages investment in the parks themselves. "Why should a park owner spend money to rehabilitate a deteriorating asset?" he said.

Councilmember Kevin Kildee echoed those concerns, adding that he could support an RSO that addressed monthly space rent increases but wanted more flexibility on what happens at the point of sale. He also raised two other issues: the ordinance's requirement that all rent increases in a park happen on a single annual date, which would disrupt existing rolling increase schedules, and the lack of an exemption when a mobile home is transferred to a blood relative.

Vice Mayor Martita Martinez-Bravo, one of the two councilmembers who led the ad hoc subcommittee on this issue, pushed back gently. She noted that Camarillo's rents are already extreme outliers. "Los Angeles starts at an average of $800 to about $1,300," she said. "Camarillo is over $2,000. We're truly an outlier."

She said she was willing to send it back to committee but wanted the revised ordinance to reflect that reality.

The public comments submitted ahead of the meeting were overwhelmingly in support of the ordinance.

One Camarillo resident, Patricia Griffin, wrote about her mother, who lived in a rent-controlled mobile home park in Oxnard for nearly 50 years. Her father passed away early, leaving her mother on a part-time income. Rent control, Griffin wrote, made it possible for her mother to live independently until she passed in 2013, budgeting each year's increase in advance and still having enough left over for her beloved bingo games.

Randolph Long, a retired real estate professional who specialized in mobile home sales, put it in concrete terms. He noted that in 2016, the move-in land rent at Camarillo Mobile Estates was $900. Today it's $2,050. He said he stopped listing homes at Lamplighter after new owners took over because of the pace and terms of rent increases.

Resident Spencer Richey, 29, noted that Camarillo was once considered the affordable alternative to places like Thousand Oaks and Los Angeles, and that mobile home parks are among the last places in the city where working-class and retired residents can afford to stay.

The park owners, represented by Bedell Law PC on behalf of Investment Property Group, formally opposed the ordinance and asked the Council to reject or delay the vote.

Their attorneys argued that rent increases have generally tracked CPI, that rising operational costs including payroll, utilities, and insurance justify higher rents, and that the vacancy control provisions would unfairly limit the parks' ability to maintain their net operating income. They also proposed a Memorandum of Understanding as an alternative to a formal ordinance. The city's ad hoc subcommittee had already declined that approach, citing concerns that it would offer weaker protections and expire after a set term.

There is broad consensus on the Council that some form of rent stabilization ordinance should be adopted. The disagreement is over the specific terms, particularly what happens to rents when a mobile home changes hands.

The ordinance will go back to the ad hoc committee for revisions before returning to the full Council for another vote. The timeline is not yet set, but the clock is ticking. The current moratorium expires April 20, and without either a new ordinance or an extension in place, Camarillo's mobile home parks would again be free to raise rents without restriction.

For the roughly 497 residents across the city's three parks, many of them seniors living on fixed incomes in homes they own but on land they don't, the wait continues.

Gabrielle Ridgeway covers local government for the Camarillo Caller.