The owner of Buena Vista Mobile Home Park in Nipomo isn’t ready to back down despite the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors and the Mobilehome Rent Review Board twice rejecting its rent increase requests.
On July 31, Buena Vista Mobile Home Park LLC filed a petition with the SLO Superior Court asking it to command the supervisors and the rent review board to set aside its rejections. The petition takes issue with the way the boards interpreted the county’s mobile home rent stabilization ordinance and could affect dozens of tenants living at the mobile home park who were named as parties in interest.
“The [rent review board] further found that the proposed monthly rent increase of $99.53 per space, averaging approximately 22.2 percent, conflicted with the ordinance’s purpose of protecting tenants from unreasonable rent increases,” the petition said. “The [review board] further concluded that, because the application lacked a valid hardship basis and proposed a rent increase of significant magnitude without tenant majority approval or incurred qualifying costs, the application failed to satisfy the standards of the ordinance.”
The rent increase requests came from mobile home park management company Harmony Communities. The review board and the supervisors shot down the first request in 2025.
The review board turned down the second request in January 2026, leading to Stockton-based Buena Vista LLC’s appeal to the Board of Supervisors. Supervisors upheld the review board’s rejection in May.
Like Buena Vista’s original argument before county officials, its petition challenges how the county applied its 40-year-old mobile home rent stabilization ordinance called Title 25.
That ordinance allows mobile home park owners to increase rents to an annual inflation adjustment up to 60 percent of the consumer price index for that year. Title 25 also provides park owners with a hardship option, though it’s limited to justifying extraordinary expenses or unavoidable cost increases that block a fair return on the park.
Buena Vista’s petition claims the ordinance “contemplated” that the annual increase capped by the consumer price index may not be enough to produce a fair return.
Buena Vista LLC bought the park in 2011, according to the petition, and has allegedly experienced a drop in net operating income since 2012.
“Despite taking the maximum annual rent increases permitted by [the ordinance], the park’s operating results reflected a sustained erosion of net operating income when measured against inflation,” the petition said. “Based on the financial information submitted with the [rent increase] application, the park’s 2024 net operating income was lower than its 2012 net operating income even before accounting for the additional erosion in purchasing power caused by inflation.”
Previously, county Deputy Auditor-Controller Michael Stevens told supervisors that the LLC believed the county misrepresented the ordinance, claiming it prevented additional inflation adjustments under hardship.
Multiple inflation adjustments aren’t authorized in the ordinance, and adding an increase inside the hardship provision could result in two inflation adjustments instead of one, Stevens explained.
County Counsel Jon Ansolabehere declined to comment on the petition.
Harmony Communities spokesperson Nick Ubaldi signed the petition verifying it. He previously told New Times that Harmony doesn’t own any mobile home parks and is a third-party property management company hired by his family to handle daily operations.
“A judicial declaration concerning the proper interpretation of the ordinance will resolve the parties’ present controversy and guide respondents [county officials] in the performance of their duties,” the petition said. ∆
This article appears in 40th anniversary edition.
