MAYOR LISTENS—About 200 people gathered on Monday to organize opposition to a proposed rent increase at Thunderbird Oaks Mobile Home Park in Thousand Oaks. They have until an Oct. 5 rent commission hearing to prove their landlord isn’t justified in increasing monthly rents by $323 a month for the park’s 161 spaces. That’s a more than $620,000 increase per year at the rent-controlled senior park, where most residents live on fixed incomes, said T.O. resident John Leslie. For some it will be nearly a 100 percent jump. Mayor Dennis Gillette, left, attended the meeting but didn’t comment because the issue may later go before the City Council. NANCY NEEDHAM/ Acorn Newspapers Many people already pay as much rent as they can afford. If the cost suddenly doubled, they wouldn’t know how to keep a roof over their heads.

Thousand Oaks resident Nancy Tamarin finds herself facing that very circumstance, and she doesn’t know what she’s going to do, she said.

She lives at Thunderbird Oaks Mobile Home Park. Residents of the 161 spaces there recently received a letter from City Manager Scott Mitnick telling them the city has accepted an application to increase their rent by $322.52.

“I can’t stay here. I can’t accept it. I can’t do it. I’m not alone. Others living here on a fixed income are not going to be able to either,” Tamarin said.

“The application is subject to a public hearing and determination rendered by the city’s rent adjustment commission,” Mitnick said.

The recently formed commission is made up of five members: a tenant, a landlord and three others who are neither tenants nor landlords. During the hearing the commission will take testimony from both sides and will render a written decision within a couple of weeks. The rent commission’s decision can be appealed to the City Council.

The hearing is to be at 6 p.m. Tues., Oct. 5 at City Council chambers in the Scherr Forum on the second floor of the Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. The commission’s decision will be made by Oct. 20.

The Thunderbird Mobile Home Park is across Conejo School Road from The Lakes, which is adjacent to city hall.

The applicant, A.V.M.G.H. Ltd. c/o Andrew Hohn, park coowner, also applied to raise the rent at Ranch Mobile Home Park at 2193 Los Feliz Drive, but the city found that application to be incomplete, according to T.O. housing and redevelopment manager Russ Watson.

For now Thunderbird is the only mobile home park in Thousand Oaks looking at a possible rent increase.

“I thought it was rent-controlled here. An 86 percent rent increase pulls the security blanket out from underneath me,” Tamarin said.

Mobile home parks in Thousand Oaks are covered by rent control with yearly cost adjustments for inflation based on the consumer price index, Watson said.

A new coach owner and a new coach also allow for rent increases, he said.

Property manager Gretchen Carter said “no comment” when asked why the property owners are asking for a rent increase at this particular time. There was no response after she was asked to have the owners contact the Acorn.

According to Mitnick’s letter, the “landlord’s justification” for the increase request is that it “is necessary for the park owner to achieve a just and reasonable return. . . . The landlord asserts that the increase is necessary to maintain the net operating income of the park at the same level that existed in 1980, adjusted for inflation.”

In the application, the owners declared they didn’t make a permitted rent increase from 1980 to 1983.

“I’m outraged that they would go after the most vulnerable at this economic time. Why didn’t they do this when times were more profitable?” Tamarin said.