Mobile Home Park Residents Cheer Ruling on Evictions

With a “For Sale” sign sitting in the window of their cozy mobile home, Butch and Vera Potter said Saturday the court victory of a former neighbor spells good news for them and other mobile home residents.

“I’m glad it turned out like it did. It might teach them a lesson,” Butch Potter, 61, said of Friday’s Orange County Superior Court verdict assessing almost $500,000 in punitive damages against his park operator for trying to illegally force residents out.

“I think it’s no more than right,” added Vera Potter, 57. “If we have laws, they should be followed.”

Several residents of the Country Club Mobile Manor Park in Santa Ana on Saturday applauded the verdict in the case brought by former owners of two homes, saying the decision should make it easier in the future for them to sell their own coaches without harassment.

Illegal Tactics

The verdict against Planned Management Inc., a Utah firm that runs the Santa Ana park and 32 other mobile home parks in Western states, found the firm used a variety of illegal tactics to try to force the former residents to move, rather than sell, their mobile homes.

According to evidence at the two-week trial, the park managers discouraged sales of the homes by threatening to require costly upgrading and rent hikes if the property changed hands.

Attorney R. Richard Farnell, representing plaintiff Daniel Kimmel, contended that the park operator preferred to attract new homes to the park rather than allow resales of homes already there.

It was the first jury verdict in the state in any case involving alleged violations of a 1983 law designed to protect mobile home owners. Prior to passage of the law, park operators could evict anyone whose mobile home was more than 17 years old. Today, residents may be evicted only if their homes fail to meet health and safety codes.

Considering an Appeal

Timothy T. Tierney, an attorney for Planned Management, said his client is considering an appeal. Tierney had said that management just wanted to maintain and enhance property values at the park.

But tenants interviewed Saturday were skeptical.

“If they had been allowed to get away with that, what next?” asked Vera Potter. Park managers have a duty to make sure residents maintain their property properly, she said, but they have no right to discourage sales by “saying everything is wrong with your property . . . that it’s not fit to live in,” she said.

“But after saying that, they still take your rent. And the old homes pay the same rent as the new ones,” Vera Potter said. “And take my word for it, this old one is twice as well built as the new ones,” she said of the 21-year-old coach she and her husband hope to sell so that they can retire and move East.

Several of the park’s younger residents, living in newer homes, said Saturday they were unaware of the decision, but many older residents who own older homes applauded the decision.

“I feel it’s terrific,” Kay Cougle, 67, who has lived in the park for 22 years, said while sitting on the porch of her neighbor, Stella Cox. “Most of us are older and can’t afford to go to court.”

The court decision “might make them (the park operators) hesitate” before attempting to force any other residents trying to sell their homes out of the park, added Cox, 72.

“We were all rooting for them,” said Gladys Breedlove, 50, a two-year resident of the park.

“If it (the verdict) stands, as it should, it gives protection to elderly people whose incomes don’t change, like mine,” said Annie Wilson, 83, who lives in the home formerly owned by one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Dianne L. Jeffries.

Required Improvements

Wilson said her home is owned by her nephew, who bought the home in a troubled sale 2 1/2 years ago. The park manager “made all sorts of conditions,” requiring improvements to the property that were “really just obstacles put in the way” of the sale, she said.

She believes park operators should insist that the coaches are maintained well, she said. “But to do that (impose unreasonable conditions) to get them out and get new, double-wide homes in, that isn’t right,” she said.

Down the street, Mabel Jensen, a resident for nine years, said she tried to sell her older home in 1983 but the manager at the time “killed the sale.” She declined to say why the sale did not go through, explaining that she had suspicions but no hard proof.

Friday’s verdict “will possibly be of some help to me and others who want to put their places up for sale,” she said. “Maybe it will influence all the parks in the state into legal treatment of the tenants.”

The Country Club Mobile Manor Park manager’s office was closed Saturday and a representative could not be reached for comment.