Westlake Village Extends Rent Control Over Protest of Trailer Park’s Owners

A controversial Westlake Village rent-control ordinance that applies only to residents of a 162-space mobile-home park has been extended, despite protests from the park’s owners.

City Council members voted 3 to 2 Wednesday night to approve a five-year extension of the ordinance, which is the target of a pending $1-million lawsuit by owners of the Oak Forest Mobile Home Park.

Mayor John McDonough and Councilwoman Berniece E. Bennett refused to vote to extend it beyond three years because of the controversy.

“I don’t want this to go on forever. It’s two scorpions in a jar fighting, just constantly attacking each other.” said McDonough.

The ordinance, unanimously approved by the City Council in 1982, was to expire in June. There are no other rental units, such as apartments, within the affluent city.

The vote came after three hours of testimony from a standing-room-only crowd of Oak Forest residents, many of them elderly. Some said the park is the only housing they can afford in Westlake Village.

They argued that they would be forced to sell their mobile homes at a loss and move from the city if rent control were abolished.

“The remaining few years that we have, we would want to live with dignity,” said Elias Cooper, a retiree and mobile-home resident.

Another resident said he determined after research that he would have to travel to Bullhead City, Ariz., to find similar prices for a mobile-home park.

Residents and the city have tried unsuccessfully in the past to negotiate an agreement to buy the spaces they rent for their privately owned coaches. The mobile-home park, on the site where the Errol Flynn movie “Robin Hood” was filmed, is shaded by aging oaks.

Oak Forest Mobile Home Estates Ltd., the park’s owners, sued in federal court in 1985 to abolish the ordinance.

The suit, scheduled for trial in September, contends that the ordinance is unconstitutional because it has taken away property rights by freezing rents to an artificially low base rate set in May, 1978.

Park owners complain that rents, which average $350 a month, are passed to new tenants when they buy coaches in the park and take over space rentals from previous residents.

Because of that, mobile-home owners who sell their coaches receive an average of $25,000 more than their blue book values, said attorney George Kimball, who represents the park’s owners.

Countered Councilman Franklin Pelletier: “We’re dealing with human beings here, not property rights.”