In San Rafael, Residents of a Mobile Home Park Are Fighting to Keep Their Homes

Tucked between Highway 101, a BevMo and a car dealership, about 45 RV parking spots line both sides of a one-lane road.

The homes at the RV Park of San Rafael are tiny, some decorated with potted plants, most sit behind short fences. On a recent evening, children ran in and out of the park’s laundromat as their parents threw piles of clothes into washing machines.

Yessica Pérez was seven when her parents moved the family there.

“In the beginning, I think we were the only children in the neighborhood because there were a lot of seniors living here,” she said. “Then, just little by little, there were a lot of Hispanic kids running around here, so it was really nice.”

That was nearly two decades ago. Back then, rent was just $300 a month, she said. It was affordable enough that her parents could eventually buy a second home in the park.

Today, Pérez lives there with her sister, surrounded by memories of the community she grew up in. Life at the park was peaceful until 2021, when Harmony Communities took over the park’s management, Pérez said.

Her family was among several others to receive 60-day eviction notices for both properties for violations that included storing a broom outside and having a porch attached to their home.

“We would fix the violation,” she said. “Seven days later, we would receive another violation on top of another violation.”

Pérez and her family fought back, challenging the eviction notices, along with other residents at the park. What followed has been a years-long battle that last month culminated in a lawsuit against Harmony Communities and the park’s owner, accusing them of harassment, illegal rent increases, and violating the terms of a past legal settlement.

For residents, the lawsuit represents a turning point in their fight to defend one of Marin County’s few affordable housing options in a region where rents are among the highest in the nation.

“We’ve heard what they’ve done in other places. We know what they do in other parks,” said Herman Privette, who’s lived at the park since 1976, adding that he has little sympathy for the company.

California Rural Legal Assistance Attorney Mariah Thompson, who is helping represent the park residents, said what’s happening in San Rafael mirrors patterns she’s seen at other parks Harmony owns or manages across California.

“We see the same tactics playing out over and over again, with slight variation,” she said. “The major themes are attempts to increase rent beyond what is permissible by rent control or deny that local rent control applies to specific parks, spaces, or homes based on what they see as perceived loopholes in the laws.”

When Harmony first took over management of the RV Park of San Rafael, residents say the company issued repeated violation notices for minor infractions, tried raising rents beyond legal limits, and filed eviction notices. In a statement to KQED, Harmony disputed those claims.

Nick Ubaldi, a spokesperson for Harmony, said in an email that the eviction notices focused on health and safety issues and the company continues “to welcome low-income families into the park.”

“These notices address severe health and safety violations to prevent incidents,” Ubaldi wrote. “We would be negligent not to enforce compliance with serious health and safety codes.”

But Legal Aid of Marin Attorney DeMarco García, who began helping families in July as co-counsel with California Rural Legal Assistance, said Harmony often singled out residents who were least likely to push back.

“They first started with the tenants that don’t speak a lick of English,” he said. “People were afraid, with everything going on with immigration, that they just stayed kind of hidden.”

Privette said he’d never seen the community shrink so much. Staring at the strip of road, he pointed to vacant spaces where families were either evicted or left.

“Starting with the one by the mail room, there’s an empty space there, and another where that truck is,” he said. “I’ve never seen it like this in all my years here.”

For decades, the community has been classified as a mobile home park. The designation means residents own their homes but rent the land underneath them, giving them protections under California’s Mobilehome Residency Law and the city’s rent control ordinance.

Back in 2004, a Marin County Superior Court judge ruled that despite its name, the “RV park” was in fact a mobile home park, subject to local rent control. The court noted the park had been built in the 1940s, long before modern regulations on lot size and setbacks, and said those older “legacy conditions,” like narrow spaces, small lots, and additions, were legally grandfathered in.

Since then, the state’s housing department has also consistently treated the property as a mobile home park, and city zoning does not allow RV parks within San Rafael city limits.

So when Harmony raised rents beyond what the city’s ordinance allows, residents and city officials saw it as a direct violation of those long-standing protections. Ubaldi, of Harmony, disputes any violation occurred.

“We did not impose the rent increase,” Ubaldi wrote. “We requested it and sought a city hearing to determine a fair outcome.”

The city and Harmony went to court, kicking off a two-year legal battle. In 2023, the two sides reached a settlement that required Harmony to dismiss pending evictions and uphold rent-control protections. But by then, several families had already left the park, García said.

And Thompson said Harmony soon resumed the same practices.

“They start issuing these same notices,” she said. “For things that [the state’s Housing and Community Development Department] has come and done an inspection on and has said we’re all cleared.”

Thompson said she hopes the new lawsuit will force Harmony to finally comply with the settlement and ensure the company follows through on its promises to the community. According to court documents, residents are suing to protect their property rights as homeowners and to put an end to Harmony’s “unlawful business practices and displacement campaign.”

“Without this court’s assistance, [the residents] will likely lose their protections under rent control, if not lose their homes and community entirely,” the lawsuit reads.

For Pérez, each new eviction notice from Harmony chips away at the stability her parents hoped for when they first came to the United States.

“It’s difficult because they really thought this was gonna be a retirement home for them,” Pérez said.

But for neighbors like Privette, the lawsuit is about more than legal protections. It’s about preserving one of the few affordable places to live in Marin County.

“To live in your own place and be able to live with an affordable rent is something I would like to see more people have,” Privette said. “I’d be happy for other people to be as lucky as I’ve been.”