Rohnert Park, CA Rental Property Rules: Rent Control (2026)

Chapter 9.70, the Mobile Home Ordinance, is the only rent-stabilization law on Rohnert Park's books, and it reaches just the city's mobile home parks, five of them holding 1,317 spaces according to the chapter's 1987 findings. Section 9.70.040 froze space rents at their December 1, 1985 level (the "base rent ceiling") starting thirty days after the ordinance's adoption, and no landlord may charge more than that ceiling unless it is adjusted under Sections 9.70.050 or 9.70.060. If a space had no rent in effect on that date, the base is set from the last rental before that date, adjusted for CPI change in the interim.

The chapter also imposes vacancy control, unusual among California rent programs: Section 9.70.042 bars a park owner from raising the rent when a mobile home is re-rented or re-sold on-site to a new resident, with an exception only for spaces that qualify as "new construction" under Civil Code Section 798.7. A five-member Rent Appeals Board, created by Section 9.70.030, sets and enforces the rent ceiling for every controlled space, requires annual registration of each space (rent, address, landlord, and housing services provided), and can authorize a resident to withhold rent from a landlord who has willfully failed to register.

Because this program is a mobile-home-park-only ordinance, it does not apply to conventional apartment or single-family rentals anywhere in Rohnert Park; those units are governed by state landlord-tenant law only, with no local rent cap.