Double-wide troubles for residents caught between Disney, developer
They’re bit players in a big drama, with names you don’t know and lines you won’t remember. While the stars take center stage, they move in and out of the shadows and then recede quietly into the void.
History always assigns the small roles to someone, and in the case of the ongoing matter over what to do with Anaheim’s resort district, those roles are going to the residents of a mobile home park on Haster Street who are waiting for their cues.
Caught between a developer, SunCal Cos., which wants to build new residences where their trailers stand, and the Disney Co., which doesn’t want the units there for the next generation of theme park-building, the residents at the Satellite Mobile Home Estates wouldn’t seem to have much clout. Not to mention an Anaheim City Council trying to make both sides happy.
“We don’t know what’s going on,” says mobile home owner Connie Jones. “We honestly don’t.” She and her 11-year-old daughter have lived the last nine years in the park. Sometimes, Jones says, her daughter is her source of information about what’s going on regarding the proposed development. I tell Jones she should double-check her daughter’s information, because she told her mother that only some units might be eliminated.
There’s no official proposal on the table now for Anaheim city officials to consider. But the talked-about plan would include roughly 1,500 apartments and condos, including around 200 for affordable-housing qualifiers. The plan doesn’t call for keeping the mobile homes.
“They’re not getting mine unless they pay me for it,” Jones says, with a bravado she probably won’t be able to back up. “I’m going to be here till the bitter end. I’m a single parent. I have a daughter. Do they really think I’m going to say, ‘Oh, OK,’ and leave? I don’t think so. Not me.”
Because there’s no immediate time frame, it probably isn’t surprising that some residents don’t know what the future holds. Such as, what kind of compensation they’ll get for moving out.
Which only reinforces their sense of unimportance in the grand scheme of things.
Michael Wright is guessing it’ll be a couple years before anyone is required to leave. If he’s worried, he isn’t showing it. “What can you do?” he says. “You’ve got to go with it. I’ve lived in Orange County 60 years. I’m pretty used to the way of things around here. You just kind of take things as they go.”
Wright says his trailer is 35 years old and probably wouldn’t be welcome at another mobile home park. He assumes he’ll relocate to an apartment.
Nobody but me asked him, but he thinks the neighborhood would be better served by Disney than by 1,500 new residences. But he’d be happy if the developer prevails, because he assumes “they could pay me and I’d get the money.”
I ask Wright if anyone in management has told him anything, given him a timetable.
“It’s frustrating,” he says, “because they haven’t told us anything.”
Is it possible they don’t know, either? “They probably don’t,” Wright says, “but that’s what’s frustrating.”
Ruth Fellows is 75 and lives in a mobile home with her daughter, Carol, who is blind. Ruth readily acknowledges they are among the “forgotten people” in the resort district debate.
It’s not a role she relishes.
“I’m worried to death,” she says Friday morning outside her unit. She thinks everyone knows what’s going on, “except the people who live here.”
I suggest that may not be true, but it doesn’t ease her mind. “I’m a senior and I have a blind daughter,” she says. “I’ve been here for a number of years, 23 to be exact, and I don’t know where I’m going or how I’m going to get there. I’m between a rock and a hard place.”
She touches my shoulder and says, “I tell you, I’ve spent more nights” -- then chokes up briefly without finishing the sentence.
She regains her composure and says, “I guess when I get my eviction notice I’ll know I have to get my butt out of here.”
Her daughter chimes in, “The bulldozers are down Katella Way, and they’re inching toward me.”
That makes her mother laugh, and Ruth Fellows says, “My daughter may have lost her sight, but she didn’t lose her sense of humor.”
Which struck me as a good time to leave them.
Most likely, the residents will be given some money when the time is right. For some, that’ll be enough to start them on a bright, new journey. For others, it’ll seem like the end of a time when they had stability and, if nothing else, a place they called home.
But one thing is certain: at some point, and probably without much fanfare, they’ll be asked to exit stage left.
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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.
