Rent control for mobile home parks on the table Township ordinance aims to protect town's most vulnerable BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer BRICK TOWNSHIP - Rents at the two mobile home parks in the township could rise no more than 5 percent a year, according to an ordinance the Township Council plans to introduce soon. Landlords must give tenants 30 days notice that they plan to increase the rent and provide the calculations used to compute the reasons. "What's more to the point is that if there is going to be any request by the owner for an increase beyond 5 percent on an annual basis, they have to come before the board, they have to say why they want the increase," said Township Attorney Jean Cipriani at the April 3 council caucus. "There's a lot they have to submit to show that." The ordinance also calls for the creation of a rent leveling board, which would consist of seven members and one alternate. All board members must live in the township and will serve without compensation. Landlords will have to provide the board with justification for why the increase is needed and receive board approval before it can be implemented, the ordinance state. "This is only going to be for mobile home parks," said council President Stephen C. Acropolis. "We are not going to have rent control in apartments, we're not going to have rent control in condominiums. This is specifically to protect the residents that live in mobile home parks." There are two mobile home parks in the township: The Waterside Gardens Mobile Home Park and the Laurelton Mobile Home Park. "One is run in exemplary fashion," Acropolis said. "It's clean. It's run right. The people do it the right way." But there are still problems at the Laurelton Mobile Home Park on Route 88, Acropolis said. The Laurelton Mobile Home Park's lack of an on-site manager and office has been a problem for the last year-and-a-half, Acropolis said. "There is no manager there," he said. "There is no office there. If you live in Waterside Gardens, you go down and knock on the super's door and say "I gotta problem.' These people [Laurelton park] don't have that protection. So we hope this particular owner gets the message that something should be done." Seventy residents in the Laurelton park received eviction notices last October from the park's landlord, Edgewood Properties, a real estate development firm owned by Jack Morris. The eviction notices came after a yearlong battle with Morris over park improvements and contaminated dirt dumped on the site. Morris later agreed to roll back the rents to the 2005 level. Cipriani looked at a number of mobile home park ordinances from municipalities throughout the state before writing one for Brick. "If this seems a little cumbersome, you should see some of them," she said. Once a mobile home is vacated, the rent for the next tenant can be raised and set at a certain level, Cipriani said. "Once it's charged for the first time, the provisions of the ordinance kick in," she said. The ordinance also allows for tenants to ask for rent decreases if the park is being operated in violation of municipal codes. "The tenant or class of tenants shall pay the reasonable rental value as full payment for rent until the landlord demonstrates to the board that the deficiency has been corrected," the ordinance states. The ordinance will be designed to help residents of mobile home parks, while at the same time making it possible for park owners to earn a living, Acropolis said. "Most of the people that live in mobile home parks are basic citizens that need our help," Acropolis said. "A year ago, half of the residents would have had to move out if the rental increases would have gone through. We don't know where they would have moved to, where they would have gone. This is there to help them." "I don't think it's going to hurt anybody that's running their park correctly," he said.