Westlake Residents Seek to Block Expansion of Mobile-Home Park
Some affluent Westlake Village residents who say they don’t want the view from their luxury ridge-top homes spoiled have launched a petition drive aimed at preventing a mobile-home park from adding 35 mobile homes in a valley below.
The group is seeking to block a city-approved agreement and zoning change that would allow the 109-acre Oak Forest Mobile Estates to increase from 162 to 197 mobile homes, said Daniel S. Murphy, a wholesale carpet dealer spearheading the petition drive.
If the group gathers enough signatures to qualify the measure for a referendum, the city would be forced to break an agreement with the park’s owners allowing park residents to purchase the land on which their mobile homes stand, city officials said.
In addition, at least 30 people who signed the petitions have notified city officials that they misunderstood the intent and want their names removed, said City Manager James E. Emmons.
The city approved the zoning change Nov. 4 as part of an agreement with the park’s owners to settle a $1-million lawsuit against the city. The park’s owners alleged in the suit, filed in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles in 1985, that the city’s rent-control ordinance unconstitutionally took away their property rights.
The settlement, reached Sept. 2, shortly before the matter was scheduled to go to court, also calls for phasing out rent control at the mobile-home park over a five-year period beginning July 1, Emmons said.
If enough signatures are gathered, the city would be required to either repeal the zoning change and agreement with the park’s owners or to schedule the matter for an election. But rent control would still be phased out.
Murphy, who lives in Southridge Trails, an affluent residential area overlooking the mobile-home park, said he started the Committee to Preserve, Protect and Maintain Westlake Village Zoning with his neighbor, Philip Gatch, planning director of Thousand Oaks.
Murphy claimed that “the City Council of Westlake Village has bartered away our zoning for a quick settlement of the lawsuit.
“We feel the City Council has not given thought to what 35 mobile homes will look like in this valley. My backyard looks right at this,” said Murphy, a 20-year resident. “I don’t want to look down at 35 mobile homes.”
About 100 other homes overlook the property, Murphy said.
But Ray Chaiken, part owner of the mobile-home park, accused Murphy of hypocrisy.
“That mobile-home park was there long before he built his house on that ridge and destroyed the ridge line,” Chaiken said. “We’re down in the very bottom of a canyon. The whole city can see the destruction of the ridge line up there. He’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
Murphy’s committee started the petition campaign two weeks ago and has collected more than half of the 412 signatures required to qualify the measure for a referendum, Murphy said. Under the law, signatures of 10% of the city’s 4,123 voters are needed. A simple majority is required to approve the measure.
Murphy said residents living in the mobile-home park have signed the petitions, but Emmons said many residents have since inquired about legal procedures for removing their names.
Council OKs Conversion
Murphy said he did not know what effect the referendum would have on conversion of the mobile-home lots to private ownership. The conversion was approved by the council Sept. 2 after a heated six-hour meeting.
“We really are not against the people who live in the park,” Murphy said. “We would like to see them settle the lawsuit, and we also would like to see them have conversion. But we feel as though the settlement agreement is absolutely abominable. It should go to the vote of the people.”
But Chaiken and Emmons said the referendum jeopardizes the agreement.
“The mere fact of qualifying the measure would throw into jeopardy the entire agreement. We would not be able to meet our conversion timetable set forth in the settlement agreement,” Emmons said.
Under the law, the zoning change allowing the park’s owners to build the extra mobile-home spaces would be frozen until the zoning issue and settlement agreement could be put before the voters, provided the city decided to schedule an election. The earliest a special election could be scheduled is this spring, Emmons said.
However, “the settlement agreement requires both parties, the city and the owner, to undertake certain actions within a certain period of time,” Emmons said. If the city fails to take the action specified under the agreement, “it would be in default,” Emmons said.
The city could not then bind the park’s owners to the conversion agreement, he said.
Chaiken said the 35 additional mobile-home lots “were an integral part of the whole conversion settlement.”
If Murphy succeeds, Chaiken said, “he’s going to do the residents of the mobile-home park out of their opportunity to purchase their lots, which is something they’ve always wanted to do. And I think it would be very sad.”
Murray Freund, president of the Oak Forest Homeowners Assn., said, “I think it’s inimical to the best interests of the park. If this petition drive goes through and we end up not being able to buy our lots, we may be subjected to much, much higher rents.”
Murphy accused city officials of entering into the agreement with the park’s owners for fear that they would lose the lawsuit.
City Councilman Irwin A. Shane called that allegation “ridiculous.”
“It’s always been part of the master plan to develop that 35 units,” Shane said.
