AB1542 - Please Help Now!

AB 1542 (Evans, D-Santa Rosa) is a bill to protect seniors and working families now living in mobile home parks by regulating the conversion of mobile home parks from rentals to resident ownership. It will be voted on by the California Senate this month. The vote will be close. Then the bill must then be signed by the Governor.
Six mobilehome parks in Sonoma County and over 40 throughout the state are under imminent threat of condo conversions. These include parks in Hayward, Vallejo, Buellton, Carson, Ojai, and San Luis Obispo. If this bill does not become law, dozens of other parks throughout the state are likely to face condo conversions. Mobile home residents from Sonoma County have chartered busses to Sacramento five times to lobby for passage of this bill. Now we need friends and allies in other parks to help carry the word to their senators and to the Governor: PLEASE PASS THIS BILL.
AB 1542 doesn’t prohibit conversions to condominiums, but it closes loopholes in current law that the park owners are using to force condo conversions on residents in order to make huge profits and get around local rent control where it exists. See the Fact Sheet for further information about AB 1542.
To get the bill passed and signed by the Governor, we need all the Democrats in the Senate to vote for it, and we need some Republican votes as well. We would ask you to have as many mobilehome residents as possible contact your State Senator and urge him or her to support AB 1542. Please fax letters to them in Sacramento. As many letters as possible will help. If a small group of residents could go talk to each senator about this bill when he or she is in the District in August, that will be even better.
A draft letter is on this blog (click on "DRAFT LETTER") to fax to your Senator. If you have any questions or need further information, please send us an e-mail at SONOCONDO@GMAIL.COM.

Note: AB 1542 is supported by the Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League (GSMOL), CMRAA. the California AARP, the League of California Cities, the Bay Area Housing Advocacy Group,, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, and the Building and Construction Trades Council of California. Further information about the bill is available online at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov