Mobile Home Park Residents Begin to Challenge the Rules

When Helen Harris put up a sign expressing support for a local political candidate in the window of her mobile home in an Anaheim park last fall, the park’s owner threatened her with eviction.

Pete Weissman received a similar threat in 1983, when he erected a flagpole and started flying the Stars and Stripes outside his mobile home in a Fountain Valley park owned by the same family.

Most mobile home residents acknowledge that the close quarters of the parks create a need for some rules and regulations, but Weissman, for one, thinks there ought to be limits on the limits.

“They have so many rules and regulations in this place,” he says, “that I feel like I’m living in El Salvador and not in Orange County, California.”

Increasingly, it seems, other mobile home owners are agreeing with him. In Orange County and elsewhere, residents are challenging park owners’ rules that limit rights that most people take for granted, such as the right to assemble, express political beliefs, fly the flag, have children or even plant flowers.

Approval of Buyers

Also being challenged are the broad powers that park owners have over residents who want to buy or sell mobile homes. In many cases, the park owner must approve the prospective buyer before the home can be sold. Like other rules ostensibly intended to protect the property value of both park owners and home owners, they underscore the mobile home owner’s peculiar position as both owner and renter.

Last year, the Orange County Grand Jury reported after a yearlong study of mobile home parks that some park owners tend to issue eviction notices “in a capricious and indiscriminate manner” whenever there is an alleged violation of a park rule. The study, which counted 232 mobile home parks containing a total of about 32,000 homes, also reports that among some owners there is a consistent pattern of harassment of residents when rules and rental charges are questioned or challenged.

Although acknowledging that mobile home park owners have the right to evict residents who are in violation of “reasonable” regulations, the report said that it appears that in some cases, seven-day notices are issued for violations of what appear to be frivolous park rules and that some park owners respond to residents’ complaints with retaliatory rent increases.

“Some tenants are told that they can move from the park if they don’t like the management’s interpretation of the park documents,” the report states.

The grand jury found, however, that mobile home owners have few options if they want to move. Empty spaces are few--the Golden State Mobile Home Owners League reports that there are “zero” vacancies in the county--and many parks will not admit mobile homes more than 5 years old.

In certain cases, the grand jury found such “severe harassment” by management that tenants were obstructed in their attempts to move.

Further, the report says that real estate dealers refuse to list mobile homes for sale in some parks because of the reputations of the owners or managers and the high rents charged for spaces.

Some residents, who note that the size of so-called mobile homes makes moving one a huge undertaking in the best of circumstances, say the rules put mobile home owners at a severe disadvantage.

“The owner has you over a barrel because you can’t move these darn places across the street without losing several thousand dollars,” says Bea Jay Bisgaard, a resident of a park in Anaheim.

Gwynne Lockwood, the president of the Orange County Mobile Home Owners Assn., said in a recent interview that her organization is now gathering information from park residents throughout the county regarding park owners’ rental policies and what residents see as “ridiculous, unenforceable” rules. The information will be filed with the district attorney and will serve as the basis for future suits, Lockwood said.

Three pending civil cases involving one of Orange County’s largest mobile home park owners are raising issues whose resolution thatmay eventuallyaffect the kinds of rules and regulations that can be enforced at mobile home parks throughout the state.

The three cases pit park owner Gerard J. Dougher and co-owners in his family against residents--including Weissman and Harris--in parks in Anaheim and Fountain Valley. Dougher, who with his wife and brother owns an interest in 10 mobile home parks with approximately 3,000 residents in Orange County, denies that his rules are too restrictive or that they infringe upon anyone’s rights.

“We’ve been hearing complaints from the same few people all the time,” he said in a recent interview.

Rules Defended

Vicky Talley, the executive director of the Manufactured Housing Educational Trust, a trade association for mobile home park owners, said that Dougher’s rules are not uncommon. “Every single park has similar rules and regulations,” she said.

Scheduled for trial Jan. 14 is a case pressed by Dougher against Weissman and his flagpole, contending that the flagpole is a public nuisance. Dougher first tried to evict Weissman from the Fountain Valley Mobilehome Park, but an injunction has allowed Weissman to keep the flag and flagpole up until the case is decided.

Dougher is now attempting to have the flag and flagpole declared a public nuisance on the grounds that it violates a park rule prohibiting “non-growing things” in yards and that it lowers property values.

Another case, which will probably not be settled for months, was brought by Donald and Robin Alexander, former residents in the same Fountain Valley park, who are challenging the parks’ adults-only rules. Their suit alleges that the Doughers forced them to move out after their child was born and, at the same time, frustrated their efforts to sell their home. The Alexanders’ attorney, Stuart Parker of Westminster, said the Doughers’ attorney sent the Alexanders a letter in September, 1982, congratulating them on the birth of their baby and informing them that they were in violation of the park’s rule prohibiting children.

Court Decision Awaited

Orange County Superior Court Judge Judith Ryan recently ruled in favor of the Doughers, saying that discrimination against children in mobile home parks is permissible. Both sides have agreed to wait until a higher court makes a decision in a similar case before deciding whether to appeal.

Dougher declined to comment on the Alexander case.

The most recent suit against the Doughers was filed in Superior Court Dec. 3, challenging restrictions regarding the posting of signs and use of a park clubhouse.

Helen Harris and two other residents of Rio Vista Mobile Estates in Anaheim contend that Dougher has restricted their constitutional right to free speech by restricting their right to post signs, including political signs, in the windows of their homes. They also say Dougher has denied their rights of political expression and assembly by not permitting voting booths in the park’s clubhouse and by restricting meetings at the clubhouse.

Harris said in an interview that she and eight others were threatened with eviction when they posted campaign signs in their windows supporting City Council candidates Miriam Kaywood and Fred Hunter, who were espousing mobile home owners’ and renters’ rights in the municipal election campaign this fall.

“I feel that my neighbors’ freedom of speech has been abridged,” said Wesley W. Willard, also a plaintiff, who is chapter president of the Golden State Mobile Home Owners’ League. In an interview, Dougher said that park regulations apply to all signs and are not an attempt to abridge residents’ political rights.

“We don’t allow any sign advertising in our parks,” he said. “They are allowed to put up a 12-inch-by-12-inch for-sale sign. Those who had signs in their windows were given seven days’ notice and ordered to cease and desist the day before the election.”

Dougher insists that the political views expressed in the signs had nothing to do with his decision to order them removed.

“There are only 300 people living in that park,” he said. “You don’t decide an election for a city of thousands on the basis of a few hundred voters. I don’t know Mr. Hunter. I’ve never met Mr. Hunter. I do know that he lost by several thousand votes.”

Location of Poll

Hunter, a newcomer to Anaheim council politics, lost the election, coming in 6,000 votes behind second-place finisher Don Roth. Hunter was backed by the Anaheim Mobile Home Owners Assn., while Roth and Ben Bay, the top vote-getter for the two council vacancies, received support from Anaheim Mobile Home Park Owners. Kaywood lost her separate bid for mayor but remains on the council.

Harris, who is treasurer of the park social club, said that Dougher’s refusal to allow the clubhouse to be used as a polling place imposed a hardship on many park residents, half of whom are elderly.

“We’ve had voting booths in the park 12 of the last 13 years I’ve lived here,” she said. “Moving the voting booths to the Rio Vista School (several blocks away) is really inconvenient for older residents and people who can’t drive.”

Dougher said that he is trying to save himself from liability and prevent unnecessary wear and tear on his facilities.

The cases now pending are not the first legal tangles involving the Dougher family and mobile home park residents.

In a July, 1982, settlement, the Doughers agreed to a permanent injunction that limited rent increases in the five parks they then owned and repealed a rule requiring mobile home owners to upgrade or improve their homes as a condition of sale or transfer to another party. The suit was pressed by residents of the Laguna Hills Mobile Estates but applies to all five parks.

The injunction expires this month, and Bobbie Harkins, a resident of the Laguna Hills park says, “We’re all worried about what’s going to happen next.”

Replied Dougher: “We believe our rents are fair. I’ve never met a tenant who was happy about paying rent.”