County planning staff are recommending that the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday lift a two-year ban on the closure or conversion of mobile-home parks in San Luis Obispo County.

The supervisors enacted the ban in 2007 — it expires in February 2009 — to give planners ample time to develop an ordinance regulating mobile-home park conversions and closures.

Staff also plans to recommend that the supervisors adopt a proposed permanent ordinance governing all park conversions and closures, said county planner Ted Bench.

The county has never had an ordinance spelling out the requirements that must be met before a mobile-home park owner can close, convert or subdivide a park; prior applications have all been handled on a case-by-case basis.

The supervisors were also expected to review and possibly adopt a proposed ordinance that would regulate the subdivision of mobile-home parks, but that hearing has been postponed until Nov. 4, Bench said.

State law requires that amendments to the county’s proposed subdivision ordinance for mobile-home parks must be heard at two separate hearings, which county planners only learned last week.

“At this late hour, that’s how we’re going to handle it,” Bench said.

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If the board adopts the proposed conversion/closure ordinance and lifts the closure-and-conversion moratorium, the regulations would become effective within 30 days, Bench said.

“It would become a new law,” he said, adding the two-year moratorium would then be officially lifted at the board’s Sept. 16 meeting.

There are 40 mobile-home parks in the unincorporated parts of the county, with a total of 2,600 spaces, making up one of the largest stocks of affordable housing in the county.

It’s estimated that at least 6,000 people live in the 40 parks, most of whom are on fixed incomes and couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. About 20 percent of mobile-home park residents rent their units.

And without an ordinance prohibiting closures, many of those residents are fearful they could lose their homes, in some cases winding up homeless.

The county can’t legally prohibit the closure, conversion or subdividing of a mobile-home park, but it can craft standards — the proposed ordinances — that must be followed if any of the actions are proposed.

Planning staff is also working to create a new land-use zone for mobile home parks that if adopted would help preserve and enhance a large part of the affordable housing stock, according to staff.

The Board of Supervisors meets at 9 a.m. at the County Government Center, 1055 Monterey St., San Luis Obispo. The mobile-home park conversion/closure ordinance is the first public hearing of the meeting.

September 8, 2008