Sale or No Sale, Adults-Only Park Wants Mom Out

The last thing divorcee Sue Hornor expected when she moved into an adults-only mobile home park in San Marcos was to get pregnant.

But she did, and her first child, Samantha Jaclyn, was born in September, six weeks premature and with a birth defect that causes the infant to lapse into periods where her body literally forgets to breathe.

Hornor is dealing with that problem, thanks to a monitoring device that sounds an alarm when Samantha Jaclyn stops breathing. But the 39-year-old woman is having less success dealing with another problem.

She is now being evicted from the adults-only park, Palomar Estates East.

It’s an eviction she is not resisting. In fact, when she learned that she probably would not lose the baby during the pregnancy, she put her coach up for sale so she could move out.

But the coach hasn’t sold, despite being touted by a mobile home broker since last July. And despite her efforts, last week the eviction threats turned even more serious.

“This letter is to inform you that it is now necessary for you to sell your mobile home immediately, and remove yourself from Palomar Estates East mobile home

park,” wrote attorney James Elliott Fitzsimmons on behalf of the park’s owner.

“If you do not sell your mobile home within 30 days,” the letter continued, “you must still remove yourself from the park. If you fail to remove yourself from the park within 30 days of this letter, we will be forced to institute legal procedures against you.”

The eviction notice has left Hornor flustered.

“It’s like giving me three options: Putting my child up for adoption, walking away from this coach and going on welfare, or living under a bridge someplace,” she said sardonically. “And I haven’t found a suitable bridge to live under.”

Sympathetic to Plight

Fitzsimmons said the park ownership is sympathetic to Hornor’s plight, but that it can only “bend over” for so long before having to enforce the park’s rules and regulations on behalf of the other tenants who expect to live in a child-free environment.

“We have to protect the interests of all the other tenants in the park and not make an exception in this case or any other case,” Fitzsimmons said. “The majority of the park’s tenants are senior citizens who move into a mobile home park designated for adults only for the expressed purpose of desiring not to live around children.

“They have a right to that, and to expect us to enforce those rules and regulations on their behalf,” Fitzsimmons said. The California Supreme Court has upheld the right of mobile home park owners to ban children under the age of 18 from their parks.

Fitzsimmons said he is aware of Hornor’s attempts to sell her coach. “But you’re talking nearly a year since she knew she was pregnant, and the park informed her early on that she would need to find a different place to live.”

Several residents at the 372-space mobile home park were reluctant to discuss the Hornor issue, but Hornor’s neighbor, Eileen Misch, said she hoped the park owners would not forcibly evict her.

Lot of Coaches Still for Sale

“She’s been trying to sell her place since even before the baby was born. It’s not as though she hasn’t tried,” Misch said. “There are a lot (of coaches) for sale at the park that are still for sale.”

As to the presence of an infant in the adults-only park, Misch said: “The baby isn’t bothering anybody. It’s not like she’s running out in the street. The park needs to bend the rules a little.”

Fitzsimmons said, however, that “limitations must be made. She cannot go on for years and years living in a mobile home park with a child simply because she can’t sell her mobile home.”

That attitude frustrates Hornor. She said she bought her coach for $38,000 more than a year ago, and is now asking $42,000 for it--an appropriate price, according to several mobile home brokers contacted in the area and the real estate agent who represents Hornor.

“It’s a soft market,” said one broker who said he sympathized and understood Hornor’s difficulty in selling her coach.

Several people have seen her coach and she received one serious offer, which was withdrawn after the prospect studied the history of rent increases at the park, Hornor said.

When she moved there, she said, the monthly rent for her space was $234. It has gone up twice since then and now the rent is $290 a month. “The one woman who was serious about buying my coach asked me: ‘Where will these rent increases stop?’ And I had to tell her, I don’t know.”

Hornor said she would gladly move into a family mobile home park--if she can sell her coach.

So for now she is keeping her fingers crossed, and hoping that the marshals don’t show up too soon at her front door with a final court-ordered eviction order.

That worst-case scenario is a possibility, attorney Fitzsimmons said.

After the 30-day period elapses Feb. 12, he said, she will be given a seven-day notice of rule violation followed by a final 60-day notice of termination of tenancy, he said. At the end of that period, he said, the matter will go to court for an unlawful detainer order which, he said, might take another month or two.

“We want nothing more than for her to sell the mobile home,” Fitzsimmons said. “But if we have to go through all this, the park is incurring legal expenses.”

And, as last week’s eviction letter noted, she would then be liable for the park’s legal expenses.

Hornor facetiously wondered if she has found a loophole in the tenant contract she signed at the park.

“I signed that I would never become eight months pregnant,” she said. “Well, I didn’t. I only carried my baby 7 1/2 months.”