A year after the Upland City Council in a calculated and secretive move, eradicated the their city’s mobile home rent stabilization ordinance that had been in place for more than two-and-a-half decades, its members Monday night voted 3-to-2 to reestablish an altered version of the measure that will leave most future such tenants vulnerable to exorbitant price escalations and make it difficult for current residents to sell their coaches.
While many or indeed most of the city’s 2,223 mobile home residents and their family members were heartened by the city council’s action this week in stemming what had been the opportunity for mobile home park owners to engage in a year of unbridled lease increases, a cross section of the city’s population who had benefited by the previous ordinance and are now subject to the disadvantage the redrafted passages of the ordinance to be put in place as a consequence of Monday night’s action sophisticated enough to understand the significance of the cards they have now been dealt as a result of the city’s sleight-of-hand are more convinced than ever that there was and continues some order of collusion involving the mayor, at least one and perhaps two of the city council members, city management, the city attorney, the city’s development services division and the city clerk with a handful of the city’s mobile home park owners.
Artifacts that remain from the city’s action taken last year demonstrate that city officials at the senior level of management sought to hide the erasure of the rental protections that had been put into the Upland City Code some time prior to the Turn of the Millennium, and had carried it out with the connivance of City Clerk Carrie Johnson, who had to have been cognizant of the implication of the action, as was the city council, which considered the matter as a stand-alone item at its last May 2025 meeting and in a follow-on “second-reading” of the ordinance at its first June 2025 meeting.
The complete and radical undoing of the mobile home rent stabilization measure was deliberately hidden in a single single legislative bundle, such that it was easily overlooked by the public at large and those most directly impacted by it. The public record shows that the agenda for the May 27, 2025 Upland City Council meeting listed as item number 13 a “business item” consisting of the “consideration of an omnibus ordinance amending various sections of the Upland Municipal Code.” Upland City Council meetings are normally held on the second and fourth Monday night of the month. In this case, the meeting was held on Tuesday evening, because of that week’s conflict with the three-day Memorial Day Weekend.
Nowhere in the agenda for the May 27, 2025 meeting is there a description of what those “various sections” of the city code consist of. Nevertheless, technically and legalistically, the city was in compliance with the requirement contained in the Ralph M. Brown Act that it make public disclosure of the action ahead of the vote. The Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, requires that an agenda providing a bare-bones description of what is to be discussed and/or voted upon by a local legislative body be posted at least 72 hours in advance.
At the May 27, 2025 meeting, the discussion with regard to the omnibus ordinance was extremely abbreviated. Though the item was up for discussion during what was considered to be a public hearing, no members of the public offered a comment on the proposed changes. The council considered the item on the basis of the ordinance’s title only and waived the necessity of have to read the full contents of the ordinance, which further obscured what was occurring, noting only that Ordinance No. 1997 “amending various sections of the Upland Municipal Code as specified” and was being given the first of two approvals by the council, pursuant to a vote.
Under the California Government Code, local governmental entities, such as cities or counties need to pass an ordinance with a majority vote of the government in question’s elected authorizing panel – the city council or board of supervisors – in a “first reading” at an open public meeting followed by an approving vote of the majority of panel members in a “second” reading at another meeting, such that the ordinance goes into effect 30 days following the second vote.
At the May 27, 2025 meeting, on a motion by Councilman James Breitling that was seconded by Councilman Rudy Zuniga, the item making the blanket changes to the Upland Municipal Code was passed unanimously.
The matter was then scheduled for a second reading, i.e., consideration and vote, at the city council’s June 9, 2025 meeting. In this way, it was the vote to take place at the June 9 meeting that provided the final determination as to whether the omnibus ordinance would go into effect.
The City of Upland in this case, through the personage of clerk Keri Johnson, had arranged, at a cost of $522.87, for the largest circulation daily newspaper in Upland, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, to publish on June 3, 2025 a legal notice of the pending finalization of the adoption of the ordinance, containing a summary of the omnibus ordinance.
With the all-capital-letter caption of “Notice Of Proposed Adoption of Ordinance No. 1997,” the legal advertisement stated, “Please Take Notice that on June 9, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers, Upland City Hall, 460 North Euclid Avenue, Upland, California, the City Council of the City of Upland shall consider the adoption of Ordinance No. 1997, entitled ‘An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Upland amending various sections of the Upland Municipal Code as specified.’ The aforementioned ordinance was introduced for first reading on May 27, 2025 by the City Council.”
A summary of the omnibus ordinance followed, stating the city council’s anticipated action would “amend and update various sections of the Upland Municipal Code as part of the City of Upland’s annual review” of its codes.
“First,” the summary stated, “the ordinance would amend Section 2.12.010 to remove the requirement that the city manager’s appointment of the director of finance must be approved by the city council. Second, the ordinance would update Section 2.14.020(C) to permit the city clerk’s designee to issue confirmation of receipt of campaign disclosure statements required by the Political Reform Act. Third, the ordinance would amend Section 2.48.090 to provide that notices inviting bids under the city’s formal bid procedure shall be posted on the city’s website instead of in a newspaper of general circulation, and to remove the requirement that the city solicit bids from a bidder’s list. Fourth, the ordinance would update Section 2.56.060(C) to increase the city’s gift limit under its conflict of interest regulations from $420.00 to $630.00. Fifth, the ordinance would amend multiple sections of Chapter 3.32, “Claims Against City.” The ordinance would replace Sections 3.32.020, 3.32.030 and 3.32.040 regarding facsimile signatures of warrants, payroll checks, and submitting certified manual signatures. Additionally, the ordinance would replace Section 3.32.050, regarding operation of the city’s check signing machine, in its entirety. Sixth, the Ordinance would delete Chapter 5.68, “Mobilehome Rent Review” in its entirety. Finally, the Ordinance would remove remove Section 13.12.050(G) (2), defining eligibility criteria for discounted water charges under the city’s water service regulations.”
Of note, is that the summary was generally more forthcoming with respect to the nature of the other elements of the city code being altered than with respect to the mobile home rent increase limitations, which was made in the most cursory and indirect manner.
At the June 9 meeting, the discussion of and vote on the omnibus ordinance was not allotted a separate public hearing but rather placed on the meeting’s consent calendar along with 16 other items. The consent calendar is normally reserved for items that are considered routine and noncontroversial, and which are grouped together to be collectively voted upon with a single vote. On a motion by Councilman Breitling seconded by Councilman Zuniga, the consent calendar was unanimously approved by the mayor and council.
Subsequent to the June 9 meeting, on June 16, at cost to the city of $537.14, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin ran a notice of the adoption of Ordinance No. 1997, which again contained a summary of the ordinance’s contents, essentially identical to that contained in the previously published notice.
The appearances of the May 27 and June 9 agendas, the action at the meetings and the legal notices garnered no citizen/resident attention.
The original Upland Mobile Home Rent Stabilization Ordinance capped annual space rent increases at $34 per month or 7 percent, whichever was greater, specifically upon the sale/transfer of the mobile home. In terms of general year-to-year increases, the historic city code limited the maximum annual lease space increase to 3 percent. With the second vote on approving the omnibus ordinance on June 9, 2025, those limits were eliminated as of July 9, 2025.
The matter remained pretty much unremarked until February of this year, when the landlords at three of the city’s five mobile home parks informed their tenants they were going to increase their lease payments by 5 percent. There were reports that the other two mobile home parks were on the verge of or had already given indication they were to seek lease increases of 10 percent. In reaction to some immediate protests to the 5 percent increase, the representative of a corporation that owns one of the city’s mobile home parks said tenants should gird themselves for a 10 percent increase next year.
The Sentinel was given information in April indicating that the ownership/management of the mobile home parks remained silent over the first eight to nine months of the mobile home rent stabilization ordinance being deleted from the Upland Municipal Code as a favor or benefit to the mayor and four members of the city council, who wanted to keep their constituents in the dark about what they had done for as long as they could for strategic reason, perhaps related to this year’s upcoming election in which Second District Councilman James Breitling, Third District Councilman Carlos Garcia and Fourth District Councilman Rudy Zuniga are due to stand for reelection. The owners of the mobile home parks, collectively and singly in most cases, sincerely believed that the eradication of the Mobilehome Rent Review/Mobile Home Rent Control Ordinance was a positive development that was long past due.
From the perspective of apartment complex owners, single family rental unit owners and mobile home owners, rent control is questionable from a constitutional standpoint in that, conceptually, it can be construed as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s “takings clause” or the Fourteenth Amendment “due process” requirement and deprives landlords of their property rights through limiting the value of their land or the use thereof. In addition, there is a case to be made that rent increase limitations can deprive those who own that property of just compensation. Nevertheless, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld rent control as a valid exercise of state and local government “police powers” to protect the public welfare, adjudging that putting a ceiling on what a property owner can charge to utilize living quarters does not qualify as an unconstitutional forced “taking” of property under either the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments.
In private and in some cases publicly the owners of mobile home parks in Upland have not been hesitant to assert that the expense of owning, operating and maintaining a mobile home park is not insubstantial and that there are risks involved that can render the parks unprofitable and/or marginally profitable. Ownership must deal with empty spaces in the parks that can be difficult to fill and payment delinquencies are a common experience which will ultimately entail evictions, which can prove expensive. Another issue is the rehabilitation of mobile homes on their premises abandoned by former tenants, the ownership of which has reverted or fallen to them. Dilapidated homes represent potential liability to landlords, they say. A factor to be considered is the relative frequency or ratio between what mobile home owners consider to be “good” tenants and “bad tenants.
In addition, the landlords and their advocates say, the value of real estate has escalated so precipitously in recent years and the regulations with regard to density on residential projects has been so relaxed that those who own mobile home parks stand to make a tremendous profit by simply shuttering their mobile home parks and either developing the property as single-family or multifamily homes themselves or selling the property to a development company with that intent. This justifies, they say, raising leasing or rental rates on mobile home space beyond the 3 percent increase per year.
At any rate, the mobile home park owners and their support network insist, whether rent control is constitutional or not, there is no requirement that a city engage in rent control efforts and cities are free to let the market control what is to be paid for leasing space in a mobile home park.
Whatever financial hardships the owners of the mobile home parks are enduring pale in comparison to what those who are living in those parks, who are in large measure senior citizens living on fixed incomes of families living at or near the poverty level and therefore among the City of Gracious Living’s most vulnerable residents, there advocates say. There was no justification for the way in which the city council blindsided them by withdrawing the rent protection previous city fathers felt was called for. The fashion in which the city council acted in May and June of 2025 lacked transparency, they maintain, and was a betrayal of the mobile home residents who had counted upon city officials to not only be open about how they function but to provide everyone an opportunity to weigh in on city policy before it is formulated, altered or disregarded. There are some who went even further than that, saying they sensed in the manner in which the Mobilehome Rent Review ordinance that had been in existence at least since 1999 something venal, i.e., crooked, had taken place, that the mobile home park owners who had a lot of money riding on doing away with rent control would not be above “greasing” city officials, including the mayor and members of the city council, in other words providing them with bribes or kickbacks.
That was a compelling theory, given the secretiveness that had surrounded the action taken in May and June of 2025. As more and more mobile home residents became aware of what had occurred this spring and city officials reacted to the growing outrage among them, the distrust of City Hall deepened and city officials found themselves best with a credibility gap.
In the face of the dismay over the elimination of the Mobilehome Rent Review ordinance, the council sought to placate the 2.81 percent of the city’s 79,040 residents who live in mobile homes by proposing to revisit the concept of the Upland City Code incorporating a mobile home rent control provision.
In placing the proposed replacement ordinance on the May 11, 2026 city council meeting agenda, City Manager Michael Blay had Development Services Director Dahlquest and Housing Manager Diane Cotto prepare a staff report with regard to a set of options of what the new ordinance should consist of as it considered resurrecting the element of the city code jettisoned last year.
In the report, Dahlquest and Cotto stated, “The proposed action supports the city’s goal of responsive and transparent governance by establishing a fair and balanced framework that protects mobilehome residents from unreasonable rent increases; ensures mobilehome park owners receive a fair and reasonable return; and establishes a clear, enforceable and workable process for rent adjustments and dispute resolution.”
Under the subject heading of “Issues and Analysis, Dahlquest and Cotto stated, “The elimination of the city’s Mobilehome Rent Stabilization Ordinance was part of a broader update last year to the city’s municipal code. The previous ordinance contained several outdated and unworkable provisions, including limitations that did not align with State of California timelines, current economic conditions, and processes that could not be effectively implemented.”
At least a handful of the city’s mobile home residents were suspicious. Dahlquest’s and Cotto’s emphasis on “transparent governance” was at a variance with the way the city had hidden the mobile home rent survey ordinance the previous year.
In framing the background for the action to be taken, Dahlquest and Cotto engaged in a slight and subtle rewriting of history.
At the very least, Dahlquest and Cotto were implying with the language “broader update” that a replacement to what had been removed last year was intended all along. That appears doubtful, at best. The secretiveness with which the mobile home rent increase limitation had been removed, followed by more than eight months during which the issue was entirely ignored suggests that the city fathers had orchestrated in silence or virtual silence the disposal of the Mobilehome Rent Review ordinance in a very purposeful way, and were testing to see if and how the mobile home residents and the population in general was going to react. The implication was that if there was no reaction or minimal reaction without a substantial show of outrage or protest, the “update” of the Upland Municipal Code with regard to mobile homes and the rent those who live in them paid would never take place.
As the council was taking up the matter at the May 11, 2026 meeting, City Manager Michael Blay fell on his sword in an effort to protect the mayor and city council from the wrath of the public and stem inquiries on the part of some of the city’s residents that might lead to revelations with regard to the mayor’s and some or perhaps even all of the council members’ connections to the ownership of the mobile home parks. Just as Mayor Velto was about to open the hearing for public comment, Blay said, “Mayor, prior to opening to public speaking, I’d just like to make a brief statement about how we got here on this. On May 27, 2025, as part of the annual omnibus municipal ordinance clean-up effort, which we do each year, Chapter 658 was repealed in its entirety. This 40-year-old ordinance was removed because there were significant gaps that could not be effectively implemented and were at odds with state law timelines. Other factors included an HOA [homeowners association] requirement for each mobile home park, forms and procedures that were never created or approved and an arbitration process without an identified provider or established fees. I did a poor job of informing the council of all of the elements of this rescinded ordinance. The elements included a provision for rent control that had been in place for 40 years. I failed to provide you with a red-lined version of this ordinance text being eliminated, so your vote back then to rescind the ordinance was based on incomplete information and that’s my fault. I’m responsible for the situation we’re in tonight and, as a result, staff has brought forth options for the city council to consider.”
While some might have been misled by what Blay said, the more astute, particularly those who recognized that the city council had taken up the matter because Mayor Velto and the council were at that point reacting to the anger of a cross section of their constituents and had purposely done nothing for close to a year to “update” the portions of the Upland Municipal Code they had altered nearly 12 months earlier, they immediately understood that the city manager was covering for the city council.
Fourteen people spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting, participated During public comment, a resident identified only as Nicholas said, “Upland made a promise to these residents of these mobile home parks. They believed that promise meant something. They believed Upland understood the unique reality of mobile home ownership. The promise was removed in a way that ordinary citizens could not reasonably have known about, organized around or come here to challenge before the damage done.”
Brian Bender, the general manager of El Dorado Mobile Home Park, told the city council, “For 40 years we have operated under the prior rent control ordinance, absorbing 89 percent of CPI increase while our costs outpace that cap every year. Our average space rent today is $840. In the last 15 years, we have seen a 350 percent increase in our liability insurance costs. Our revenues have not kept pace. We are responsible for every inch of utility infrastructure within the 30 acres of the mobile home park, including 2.5 miles of streets, every electric line, water line, gas line from the master meter to each of the homes. The park was built in 1972. That infrastructure is aging. We are already at electrical capacity and cannot safely handle EV [electrical vehicle] charging or the proposed elimination of natural gas appliances from the State if California. We simply cannot afford these upgrades.”
Bender said the mobile home park operators could not abide by the city forcing them to continue to rent space at rates that does not keep up with the rate of inflation. Anticipating that the park owners would be permitted to up the rental charge on sold coaches in accordance with market rates, Bender said, the owners would still be losing money for years to come, comparative to what they could do with the property if it were used for other purposes.
“Eight percent of homes turnover [i.e., are sold] each year,” Bender said. “Even with resetting each each sold home being returned to a market rate, it will take over ten years to reach a sustainable base.”

Janice Arcuri and a woman identified only as Cindy called upon the city council to restore the ordinance to what it had been prior to July 2025.
David Podley, who said he had an interest in El Dorado Mobile Home Park, SAID, “The ability to provide phenomenal service and phenomenal quality of life… unfortunately… has been thwarted to some extent by the rent control situation we’ve had for the last 40 years. Many of our costs in the last 15 years alone at the park have gone up by over 300 percent. In the same time period, rents have gone up total by about 42 percent. That gap of over 250 percent is being borne by the owners of the park. The challenge the park has is costs are going up.” Podley called upon the council, in framing the new ordinance, to give park owners the ability to adjust rental rates upward when residents leave.
Darlene Jackovich told the council, “I understand market values. I understand the need for profit. That is the driving force of our society. But there is something to be said for those of us whose place in life does not allow us to keep up with the market values, those who put their years in building and developing the society and are now living on a fixed income and cannot keep up with the demands of the market. Please do not disregard us. We did our part when we were younger, when we were your age. Now, we need your help and your protection. She said the withdrawal of the ordinance was having a “devastating effect. Protect the many who are in need and not just the few who want more.”
Greg O’Hagen, who represents the management of Upland Meadows Mobile Home Park, offered his view that if the city is to readopt a mobile home rent control ordinance, it needs to revise it from what it was and give park owners absolute freedom to increase the rent on the space for sold homes far beyond the 7 percent limitation. “Managing mobile home parks is similar to running a small city,” O’Hagen said. “We must maintain all of the community’s infrastructure, all of the underground utility lines, all of the roads, all of the common areas. [Maintaining infrastructure] is costly, it’s ongoing and it is essential. I ask you: could the city maintain its own infrastructure just on 80 percent of its own revenue? That’s what the existing [i.e., previous] ordinance asks us to do. For these communities to remain viable and sustainable long term, the ordinance [them] governing must also evolve over time. The revised ordinance before you tonight achieves that balance.”
If the city imposed an ordinance that was financially onerous to the mobile home park owners, the mobile home parks will be sold to developers, leaving the residents of the parks without a place for their coaches, O’Hagen said.
During the discussion among the council members with regard to the ordinance, Second District Councilman Breitling after reflecting an understanding that the city’s current mobile home park residents wanted and needed annual limitations on their rent escalation, fixated again and again on the impact a redraft of the ordinance would have going forward, as if he were seeking from those present concern for future residents of the mobile home parks. Despite his efforts, no one articulated such a concern.
First District Councilwoman Shannon Maust evinced direct concern about the redraft option which allowed for the unlimited increase on the rent to be charged to future mobile home park residents, i.e., those who purchase a mobile home from an existing tenant or the mobile home park ownership. She noted the enthusiasm of those in the gallery for the council’s seeming embrasure of the revamped version of the ordinance which did away with the limitation on the initial escalation of rent to be charged on purchasers of coaches. She informed them that a close reading of that version would have implications for the current mobile park residents in that it might impact their ability to sell their coaches or the price they might get for them.
Maust made a motion to simply restore the previous version of the ordinance as it pertains to mobile home parks, mobile home residency and mobile home rents. Further discussion ensued before that motion was seconded, during which Mayor Velto made a substitute motion, seconded by Fourth District Councilman Rudy Zuniga, which which under Roberts Rules of Order must be voted upon prior to a revisiting of the original motion. Velto’s substitute motion was to restore the previous ordinance with a cut-out in which the unlimited escalation of rent on incoming residents can be imposed upon them after their purchase of an existing coach or the location of a new coach into a space vacancy. The gallery, which appeared to be occupied in large measure by current mobile home park residents, was positively disposed toward the substitute motion. Before the vote took place, Maust stated that she would be voting against it because she was hopeful it would fail, at which point she could revive her motion to reinstate the ordinance as it previously existed in its entirety.
Velto’s substitute motion passed on a 3-to-2 vote, with Velto, Zuniga and Third District Councilman Carlos Garcia prevailing and Maust and Breitling dissenting.
Former Second District Councilwoman Janice Elliott, acutely conscious of the manner in which the rental protection provision was cut out of the city code last year, has filed a public records act request with the city seeking
all written communication and phone log information spanning the time between May 1, 2023 up to May 13, 2026 pertaining to all mobile home issues or that relating to the city council’s action to rescind the mobile home ordinance in 2025 and to revive it in 2026, involving City of Upland employees, agents, attorneys, or contractors and all owners, property managers, employees, attorneys, or agents of the six mobile home parks located in Upland.
Elliot’s request also sought any analysis by the city attorney or any city employee of the impact of the ordinance as proposed and voted upon at the May 11, 2026 meeting as well as any analysis showing a comparison of the current provisions of the proposed ordinance and the “mobilehome rent review” ordinance that was previously in place until it was suspended or ended by the council’s action in May and June 2025.