A mobile home park owner in California cannot simply decide to close a park and tell residents to leave.

State law requires a formal impact report with a relocation plan, a specific notice sequence that can stretch to 12 months or more, and in some cases a paid appraisal of every displaced resident’s home before the park can legally change use.

Here is how the process actually works, and why it takes so much longer than most people expect.

Table of Contents

Two Statutes Working Together

Closing a mobilehome park, or converting it to another use, is governed by two separate California code sections that have to be read together: Government Code Section 65863.7, which requires the impact report and relocation plan, and Civil Code Section 798.56(a)(7), part of the Mobilehome Residency Law, which sets the actual notice periods a park owner must give residents before the tenancy can be terminated for a change of use.

The first statute controls the planning and local-approval process; the second controls when residents actually have to move out.

A park owner has to satisfy both, not just one, and skipping either one — getting the land-use permits approved without ever filing the required impact report, for example — does not shorten the process; it simply leaves the closure vulnerable to challenge later.

Step One: The 60-Day Notice Before Seeking Permits

Before a park owner can even appear before the local planning commission or city council to request the permits needed for a change of use, Civil Code Section 798.56(a)(7)(A) requires at least 60 days’ written notice to every homeowner in the park that management intends to seek those permits.

This is the first formal signal residents get, and it comes well before any closure is actually approved — it is notice of an intent to ask, not notice that the park is closing.

Step Two: The Impact Report and Relocation Plan

Separately, Government Code Section 65863.7 requires the person or entity proposing the change in use to file a report on the impact of the closure with the local agency before it approves any change of use.

That report has to include a replacement and relocation plan adequately mitigating the impact on displaced residents’ ability to find adequate housing in another mobilehome park.

The local legislative body, or an advisory agency it delegates to, must review the report, consider the overall housing availability in the jurisdiction, and make a finding on whether the closure will contribute to a shortage of housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income households before it can approve the change.

It can also require the park owner to take further steps to mitigate the impact as a condition of approval.

When this report is filed before an actual closure (as opposed to after a disaster, discussed below), the park owner has to give a copy to residents at the same time required notice under Civil Code 798.56 goes out, and either the park owner or a resident can request a hearing before the local legislative body specifically on whether the report is adequate.

That hearing right exists independently of whatever permit hearings the underlying land use change requires.

Step Three: Six or Twelve Months’ Notice of Termination

Once permits are actually granted, Civil Code 798.56(a)(7)(B)(i) requires the park owner to give residents at least six months’ written notice of termination of tenancy before they have to leave.

If the change of use does not require any local government permits at all, the notice period is longer, not shorter: Section 798.56(a)(7)(B)(ii) requires at least 12 months’ notice before the change occurs, and the notice has to disclose and describe the nature of the change in detail.

In practice, this means a park owner who needs no permits to convert the use faces a longer minimum notice obligation than one whose project goes through a full local approval process, because the permit hearing itself functions as an earlier form of public notice that the no-permit pathway skips.

In-Place Market Value: What Happens If a Resident Can’t Relocate

If a displaced resident cannot obtain adequate replacement housing in another mobilehome park, the person proposing the change of use has to pay that resident the “in-place market value” of their mobilehome.

This is a specific, statutorily defined appraisal standard: a state-certified appraiser experienced in valuing mobilehomes has to base the appraisal on the home’s current in-place location and assume the park continues to operate, rather than appraising the home as if it had to be physically moved and re-sited elsewhere, which is typically far more expensive and sometimes not even feasible for an older home.

The park owner pays for this appraisal and has to include it in the impact report itself, not produce it later if challenged.

The Disaster Exception

Both statutes carry a modified track for closures caused by damage or destruction from a disaster, as defined under Civil Code Section 798.64.

In that situation, the impact report also has to include a technical service inspection report from the state Department of Housing and Community Development documenting the observed conditions in the park, and the in-place market value payment requirement described above does not apply.

HCD’s technical service inspection in this context focuses narrowly on the physical condition of the park following the disaster — things like damaged utility infrastructure, compromised pads, and structural safety — rather than functioning as a standard appraisal, and “management,” as defined elsewhere in the Mobilehome Residency Law, is treated as the party responsible for preparing the impact report in a disaster-driven closure, the same role an owner or developer would otherwise play in a voluntary redevelopment.

This distinction has become more than academic in California in recent years, as wildfire losses have forced the question in parks across the state. A resident whose home survived a fire that damaged common infrastructure elsewhere in the park may still be displaced through this disaster pathway even though their own unit sustained no direct damage, and should not assume the standard, non-disaster notice periods and in-place valuation requirements apply.

Separately, paragraph (2) of subdivision (a) of Government Code 65863.7, which creates the in-place market value payment obligation, is itself written to not apply when the closure is disaster-related — meaning the carve-out for disasters affects both the type of inspection required and whether the purchase-of-home obligation attaches at all, not just one or the other.

Residents navigating a disaster-driven closure are often also dealing with their own insurance claims and FEMA or state disaster assistance timelines running in parallel with the park’s own process, which adds a layer of complexity a routine, planned redevelopment closure does not have.

Because the disaster pathway removes the in-place market value payment obligation, residents and their attorneys should expect to scrutinize whether a closure genuinely qualifies as disaster-driven under Civil Code Section 798.64, rather than accepting a park owner’s own characterization of the event, since that classification alone determines whether the standard appraisal-and-purchase protection applies at all.

What Happens If the Park Loses Its Operating Permit

A tenancy cannot be terminated for a change of use, or for the other grounds under Civil Code 798.56(a)(5) covering chronic nonpayment, unless the park currently holds a valid permit to operate issued under the Health and Safety Code.

This creates an odd overlap: a park whose operating permit has been suspended by the local enforcement agency is itself treated, under Government Code 65863.7(j), as a change of use triggering the impact-report requirement, with the park owner standing in as the party responsible for preparing it — the same obligations apply whether the owner initiated the closure voluntarily or lost the ability to keep operating through a permit action.

“Homeowner” Has a Specific Meaning Under This Law

The Mobilehome Residency Law’s protections, including the change-of-use notice requirements described above, apply to a “homeowner” — someone who owns the mobilehome itself and rents only the space it sits on.

A person who rents a mobilehome that someone else owns, space and all, is instead covered by ordinary California landlord-tenant law rather than the Mobilehome Residency Law’s specific notice and relocation framework.

This distinction matters enormously in a park closure, because the party entitled to an in-place market value appraisal and a six- or twelve-month notice is the homeowner who owns the unit, not necessarily every person living in it.

A tenant renting a mobilehome from its owning homeowner would look to that homeowner, and to standard eviction notice rules, rather than directly to the park’s closure obligations under Section 798.56.

Local Agencies Can Charge Fees — and Can Go Further Than State Law Requires

Government Code 65863.7(g) lets the local legislative body establish reasonable fees under Government Code Section 66016 to cover its own costs of administering the impact-report and relocation-plan review process, and those fees are charged to the party proposing the change in use, not to residents.

Beyond fees, the mitigation a city or county can require as a condition of approving a closure is not capped by a specific statutory formula — the statute gives the local agency discretion to require steps that actually address the adverse impact on displaced residents’ ability to find comparable housing, which in practice has ranged from extended notice periods beyond the statutory minimum, to required cash relocation assistance beyond in-place market value, to conditions tied to replacement housing elsewhere in the jurisdiction.

This is one of the more consequential discretionary powers local government holds over mobilehome park closures, and it is also why the specific mitigation terms in one city’s approved closure can look very different from another’s, even though both start from the same state-law floor.

Why This Differs So Much From an Apartment Building Closing

An apartment owner who wants to take units off the rental market entirely, through the Ellis Act, faces a different and in some ways simpler framework: a fixed statutory notice period and, in most cases, no requirement to pay for an independent appraisal of each tenant’s personal property or prove they can find comparable replacement housing nearby, since Ellis Act withdrawals are built around removing units from the rental market rather than relocating owned structures.

A mobilehome park closure is harder for the park owner precisely because residents own something physically difficult and often financially impractical to move — the home itself — which is why California’s relocation framework for mobilehome parks is built around valuing and potentially purchasing that asset in place, rather than simply giving notice and letting the resident find a new unit to rent elsewhere.

How This Compares to an Ordinary Sale of a Mobilehome Park

None of the closure and relocation requirements described above apply simply because a park changes ownership while continuing to operate as a mobilehome park.

A new owner who buys an operating park and keeps renting spaces to existing homeowners under their existing rental agreements has not triggered a change of use, and residents’ tenancies continue under whatever local rent ordinance and the Mobilehome Residency Law already governed the park before the sale.

The impact-report and extended-notice framework is specifically about ending the park’s use as a mobilehome park, or about an individual space’s use ending within it, not about who holds title to the underlying land.

Charter Cities Are Not Exempt

Government Code 65863.7 explicitly states that it applies to charter cities, foreclosing an argument some local jurisdictions might otherwise try to make that their home-rule authority lets them opt out of the state’s minimum relocation and impact-report requirements.

The statute also sets a floor, not a ceiling: local agencies remain free to adopt stricter local ordinances requiring more notice, a larger relocation plan, or additional mitigation than state law demands, and a number of California cities with significant mobilehome park inventories have done exactly that through their own municipal codes.

Rent Control Still Applies Up Until the Closure Actually Happens

Residents sometimes assume that once a closure notice goes out, normal park rules and rent protections stop mattering. They do not.

Until the tenancy actually terminates on the date specified in the required notice, the park continues operating under its existing rules, including whatever local rent stabilization ordinance applies, similar to how Thousand Oaks’ mobile home rent control ordinance continues to govern rent increases in a park that has not yet closed.

A homeowner who stops paying rent or utilities after receiving a change-of-use notice, assuming the tenancy is effectively already over, can still face a nonpayment termination under a completely separate provision of the same statute, on a much shorter timeline than the closure notice itself.

Selling a Mobilehome Facing Park Closure

An owner who sees a closure coming does not have to wait for the in-place market value appraisal to find out what the home might be worth, and does not have to assume the only path forward is paying to physically relocate the home to another park, which is often impractical for an older mobilehome and sometimes impossible if no comparable space is available nearby.

Selling before the formal process concludes can be a faster way to realize value, particularly for homes that may not be in condition to survive a move.

This is a different situation from selling a site-built house with a lien, since a mobilehome’s title and any underlying land lease are treated separately under California law, and a buyer experienced with manufactured and mobile homes will understand that distinction going in rather than treating the sale like an ordinary real property transaction.

First Steps If Your Park Has Received a Closure Notice

Read the notice carefully to determine which stage of the process it represents — the 60-day pre-permit notice, the impact report itself, or the final 6- or 12-month termination notice
Request a copy of the full impact report and relocation plan if one has not already been provided
Ask whether a hearing on the adequacy of the report has been requested, and if not, consider requesting one
Keep paying rent and utilities on the normal schedule until the tenancy actually terminates, to avoid a separate nonpayment issue

These timelines and valuation rules apply statewide, but how aggressively a local agency uses its discretion to require extra mitigation, and how quickly a given city processes the permit hearings a closure depends on, varies considerably from one California jurisdiction to the next.

If you own a mobilehome facing a park closure or change of use and would rather sell now than wait through the relocation process, Cash Home Buyers CA can discuss a no-obligation cash offer. You can see our Google Business Profile at this link.

When a Mobile Home Park Closes in California: The Notice and Relocation Rules