The fight's not over at Indian Springs Mobile Home Park.

After losing his latest effort to get an $86 per-unit rent increase at the park, owner James Goldstein has applied to the Palm Desert Rent Review Commission for a $314.44 per-unit increase.

The commission voted down the $86 increase at a stormy meeting on Sept. 22. Residents received a notice about the new request a week later in a letter announcing that the $314.44 increase would go into effect Jan. 1.

A date for a commission hearing on the new request has yet to be set. City officials were unavailable for comment on the case, but park residents are organizing to oppose it.

“I can't make it,” said resident Margo Iverson, who lives on a limited income of about $1,450 per month.

Iverson, 67, now pays $475 a month in rent at the 191-unit park at 49-305 Highway 74, where she and other residents own their homes but pay for the land.

“I pay Medicare, I pay supplementary insurance, and I pay insurance to get my prescriptions for $4,” Iverson said. “That alone is between $275 and $300.”

But Thomas Casparian, Goldstein's attorney, said the city will have to allow the increase based on the hardship provisions in its rent-control ordinance.

“The numbers are what the numbers are,” Casparian said. “Where you've got an ordinance like Palm Desert's that has a very clear entitlement to a rent increase, where those numbers show you have not maintained net operating expenses as adjusted for half of inflation.”

In the application for the rent increase, Goldstein claimed a net operating shortfall in 2007 of $424,333, plus close to more than $2 million in costs for a new sewer system for the park, amortized over 25 years.

The sewer system, and who should pay for it, has been at the center of a three-year battle between Goldstein, park residents and the city.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development ordered Goldstein to install the new system, linking the park to the city's sewer line, to replace an aging septic system.

Goldstein's previous applications for rent increases — one for $263 in 2007 and the $86 request this year — claimed the new system as a capital improvement.

The Rent Review Commission turned down both, accepting the residents' argument that the new sewer was a long-overdue maintenance expense.

Casparian said both decisions were illegal.

“Palm Desert's rent-control ordinance is very clear that the park owner is able to recover the cost of capital improvements through increased rent,” he said.

Jono Hildner, another Indian Springs resident, said that without the sewer and other expenses in the application — such as more than $278,000 in legal fees — Goldstein is making money on the park.

“We need to look at fair return on investment, not just net operating income,” Hildner said. “With existing rents, it's very clear he's making a very nice return on his investment.”