The City of Morgan Hill will loan $13.2 million to Millenium
Housing to keep the Hacienda Mobile Home Park as an affordable
place to live for seniors.
The City of Morgan Hill will loan $13.2 million to Millenium Housing to keep the Hacienda Mobile Home Park as an affordable place to live for seniors.
Millenium is a nonprofit that buys, renovates affordable mobile home parks in California. It has offered to raise space rents $40 a month for each of the 164 spaces until a cap of $530 is reached. Today’s average rate is $360 per month.
The current owners asked the city for a $200 a month raise, which the city denied. Some residents now consider Millenium their only hope to save them from extravagant rate increases.
A parade of retired residents trooped up to the microphone at Wednesday’s City Council meeting and pleaded with the council to approve the loan.
Bill Keig said residents face two risks by failing to go with Millenium.
“Rent control can be overturned by the courts,” Keig said, “and the owner could sell to a private party.”
Eleanor Sanford, 83, said she has lived in the park for six years.
“Residents got $10,000 together to fight the $200 rent increase and won,” Sanford said. “This Millenium purchase is our only safeguard. If the owners don’t sell to Millenium, they could sell to somebody else; it could be a developer.”
A private party or developer could raze the park and build more lucrative condominiums or houses without rent control issues.
At the previous week’s council meeting, several other residents asked council to hold off on approving Millenium’s loan because they felt pressured into voting for the sale. Council members did hold off and insisted that residents be offered a chance to understand what the sale would mean to them.
Millenium held all-day meetings and drop-in sessions on Oct. 29 and Wednesday no one spoke against the sale or loan. Residents voted 101 to 35 in favor of the sale. Twenty-seven residents did not vote and one space was vacant.
Millenium promised not to evict any resident because they could not afford the rent increase. The city reserved $1.2 million of the loan to help underwrite rent assistance if it were needed by a resident.
Homeowner’s Association president John Liegl said he was glad the matter was settled for the residents have worried about the increase and the threat of conversion to condominiums.
“Age should not be a burden, but a blessing,” Liegl said. He thanked the city for doing right by its seniors.
Council approved the loan 4 to 0; Councilwoman Hedy Chang was absent, recovering from surgery.
