2023 Mar 23 Oppose letter unless amended AB 887 Floating homes

March 23, 2023 

The Honorable Mia Bonta
1021 O Street, Suite 5620
Sacramento, CA 95814 

RE: AB 887 (Bonta, 2023): Floating home marinas – Oppose unless amended 

Dear Assemblywoman Bonta, 

On behalf of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, I write to respectfully oppose new amendments to your Assembly Bill 887, as amended March 16, 2023. While we agree there are opportunities to amend last year’s AB 252 (Bonta, 2022) toward its intended benefits, the proposed requirement in AB 887 for private floating home marina owners to make their financial statements and projections publicly available would establish new and far-reaching precedent to compel disclosures by private businesses not afforded by state law. 

Our Board of Supervisors desires to work with you and your office to strengthen Assembly Bill 252 with provisions we believe will enable the legislation to work more effectively in practice for both floating home owners and floating home marina owners in Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin County. We seek shared goals, applicable to any floating home community, of long-term lease protections and the security associated with annual rent caps balanced with the shared benefits of sea level rise mitigations necessary to preserve these unique and culturally significant communities. 

We appreciate the tenant protectionary intent of AB 252 and the Legislature’s focus on floating homes as uniquely interconnected housing absent any such protections in law previous to your bill. Floating homeowners sought rent protections – then provided to mobile homeowners and land-based renters. However, floating homeowners also require long-term security from marinas whose docks and infrastructure they rely upon to access their homes. In turn, floating home marina owners rely on income from floating home owner berth rents to recoup the significant investments in capital improvements associated with upkeep of their facilities in the face of the increasingly severe winter storm events and rising sea levels associated with accelerating climate change. 

On March 1, 2023, our Board authored a letter to your office respectfully requesting several changes to last year’s AB 252 that we believe, if enacted, would improve the legislation’s desired outcomes for both parties (tenants and marina owners). These requested changes came after several meetings with Marin’s floating home marina owners over the past few months, who we now understand were unaware of AB 252 until after its signing. We will be engaging local floating home owners on these provisions as well. 

We believe that many of the circumstances that AB 252 was intended to address (e.g., sudden, steep, and routine rent increases) were largely already prevented among Marin’s floating home marinas. For example, tenants in Marin already enjoyed 10-, 20- and 30-year leases with average annual rent increases capped at CPI with a maximum of 7.5% (as opposed to some other Bay Area floating home marinas where some tenants were on month-to-month leases and were facing a doubling of rents). The nature of these decades-long leases meant that the floating home marina owners relied on the opportunity to reset berth rental rates to market at the time of the sale of a home in order to remain financially viable. AB 252’s new in-place transfer clause eliminated that ability, locking some marina owners into continuing berth rental rates that in some cases were established in the 1990’s – even though home sale values reflect significantly increased 2023 market rates and the capital costs associated with necessary sea level rise mitigations reflect current materials and labor costs. 

We respectfully request that, as your office moves forward with amendments to AB 887 and/or AB 252, you remove AB 887’s financial disclosure provision, and also include the following provisions in future amendments:

1. For any floating homes with long-term leases (e.g., 10 years or longer), eliminate the in-place transfer provisions of AB 252, and re-establish vacancy decontrol for berths with such long-term leases.
2. Exempt from the rent control protections included in AB 252 those tenants who are in, or will enter into, long-term leases with the marina owners, or maintain rent control consistent with caps already applicable per those long-term contracts (e.g., CPI capped at 7.5%).
3. Authorize direct assessments for shared costs associated with mitigation for sea level rise adaptation, infrastructure improvements, and maintenance and resiliency fees. 

Without adequate financing tools, including direct assessments to benefitting tenants, marina owners will not be able to fund expensive projects that will protect both the marina and the homeowner from inevitable sea level rise. One local marina owner, for example, recently completed a $20 million marina, park and capital improvement project to raise its adjacent parking lot. As it stands now, this marina’s ability to cover its debt service has been compromised by the unintended effects of AB 252. 

These requested amendments are intended to protect both the floating homeowners and the marina owners, while acknowledging the shared interest in protecting and improving marina infrastructure, which protects the homes attached to the marina. The amendments are equally applicable in Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin County. Again, we seek the shared goals, applicable to any floating home community, of the protections and security associated with long-term leases and annual rent caps balanced with the shared benefits of sea level rise adaptations and mitigations necessary to preserve these communities. 

Absent these narrow exemptions, AB 252 and AB 887, as currently written, will have the unintended effect of creating stranded assets that marina owners cannot preserve financially, and therefore will significantly impair the ability of these unique, economically diverse communities – including seniors, artists, and many long-time residents – as viable opportunities for housing in the years ahead. 

Please see the enclosed March 1, 2023 letter and memorandum for more in-depth information regarding the specific qualities of the floating homes in Sausalito’s marinas, their financing requirements, floating home marina infrastructure, and standard leasing practices that are long-standing conditions in Marin’s floating home marina communities. 

We look forward to working collaboratively with you and your office on AB 887, and we believe that with these requested amendments, we can truly meet these shared goals of tenant protections and long-term housing preservation in these unique Bay Area floating home communities. 

Sincerely, 

Stephanie Moulton-Peters, President
Marin County Board of Supervisors 

CC: Assemblymember Damon Connolly
Senator Mike McGuire
Marin County Board of Supervisors 

Attachments:

1. March 1, 2023 Letter to Asm. Mia Bonta re: AB 252 (Bonta, 2022): Requested Changes in 2023 Follow-Up Legislation
2. Attached memorandum from March 1, 2023