At Mobile Home Park : Tenants’ Rights Law Challenged

Carson’s ordinance to protect tenants when a mobile home park closes has holes wide enough to haul a double-wide trailer through, according to an attorney for the Avalon Carson park, which has announced plans to shut down.

The ordinance says, among other things, that park owners have to buy the homes of tenants who do not wish to move them. Owners also must pay to relocate tenants and their homes to a park no more than 50 miles away.

Carolyn H. Carlburg, attorney for Avalon Carson owner Darryl Wong, said in a March 4 letter to city officials that both provisions are not valid or enforceable and asked the City Council to get rid of them--or face the possibility of a lawsuit.

‘Spared Expense’

If the council does as she suggested, “the owners will be spared the expense, difficulty and delay of addressing provisions and requirements which are unenforceable, not to mention litigation, should the city of Carson attempt to enforce the invalid requirements,” Carlburg said in her letter.

In response, City Atty. Glenn Watson said the ordinance is valid.

Nonetheless, questions about the ordinance are troubling Carson’s politically active mobile home community, which includes the 215 owners of mobile homes in the Avalon Carson and those at the 44-space Citation park, which also is shutting down.

At a candidates forum Tuesday at the Colony Cove mobile home park, the city’s second largest park, Councilwoman Vera Robles DeWitt told one worried resident that Watson was checking into the issue and that his initial analysis appeared favorable for the city.

Avalon Carson, a 41-year-old park at 616 E. Carson Street with 171 spaces, will close some time after Jan. 1, 1989, according to a spokesman for the Wong family. The spokesman said the family has no plans for the 9-acre parcel, which is worth an estimated $10 million.

Watson was dubious. “People just don’t let a valuable piece of property lie,” he said.

Wong, whose family has owned the Avalon Carson park since 1979, said members decided to close the park because of another Carson ordinance, one that regulates mobile home rents. He said the rent-control law has been devastating for park owners.

Disparity Cited

Wong asserted in a letter to city officials that the cost-of-living index rose 71% between 1979 and 1987, while rent increases permitted at the park under the ordinance averaged only 28%. Much of that, Wong said, was an increase granted to pay for $100,000 in capital improvements.

Monthly rents at the park range from $108 to $192, according to city figures.

In the same period, Wong said, the average selling price of a mobile home increased from $20,000 to $50,000. He said the aging park was due for major rehabilitation, estimated to cost $850,000, but that he would not be able to undertake it because of the rent-control ordinance.

“Our past experience tells us that there is no reasonable expectation that a capital improvement rent increase application of this amount would be approved, and even less likelihood that the kind of cost-of-living increases necessary to cover such investment would ever be granted,” Wong said.

“We are earning a rate of return below the rate paid on an ordinary passbook savings account.”

Bob Loschi, who has lived for 23 years in his 27-foot trailer in the Avalon Carson park, conceded: “We are getting cheap rent.” But he said that the Wong family has neglected the park and should not shut it down.

Watson challenged Wong’s analysis, saying that the cost-of-living index had risen only 32% between 1979 and 1984, the year of the last rent increase granted by the city, and had increased 51%--not the 71% cited by Wong--between 1979 and 1987.

“If Mr. Wong’s action to close the park is based on the figures he cites, I would suggest that he re-examine . . . his decision to close the park,” Watson said in a March 7 letter to Carlburg, Wong’s attorney.

Carlburg based the most important part of her attack on Carson’s mobile home relocation ordinance on a 1985 change in the state law governing the closure of mobile home parks.

Before 1985, the state law, adopted in 1980, said it would not bar municipalities from passing stronger relocation rules. That provision was deleted in 1985 and a new provision added that says municipalities may not require more than “reasonable costs of relocation.”

Carlburg said in her letter to city officials that the change in state law “preempts” the Carson ordinance’s requirement that park owners purchase homes at their in-place value--which city officials say is typically three to four times their value outside a park.

Carlburg also said the city’s requirement that park owners find replacement spaces within 50 miles for tenants wishing to relocate was an impossible task and would have the “practical effect of thwarting the owners’ right to go out of the mobile home park business.”

There are “virtually no vacant spaces in all of Southern California” mobile home parks and “it is unlikely that the tenants of Avalon Carson will be able to find any spaces within the radius included in the Carson ordinance,” she said.

Watson, in his letter to Carlburg, posed a series of questions about what would be considered the “reasonable costs of relocation,” which he said the state law did not define. “Is it your view that only the cost of physical tear-down, moving and set-up may be required?” he asked.

He said in an interview that he would provide his own answers and analysis to the council within 30 days, but is prepared to defend the ordinance.

“The ordinance in my opinion is valid and the assertions in the letter are incorrect,” he said.

Upheld by Supreme Court

The ordinance has been upheld by the state Supreme Court, but that was before the 1985 change in state law.

The only park to close under the ordinance is the Sites park at 16200 S. Figueroa St., which announced in 1982 that it would convert the land to a manufacturing use. Most of the mobile homes at the park were older ones with an in-place value of about $20,000 and a stand-alone value of $3,000 to $4,000, according to City Planner Timothy O’Rourke.

The closure process took more than a year and near the end, with 14 coaches remaining, the owner proposed a payment of $600 for moving expenses to those who wanted to move. For those who wanted to sell their homes, the offer was $1,000 plus $100 for every year the tenant lived in the park.

“The Planning Commission found the proposal was vastly inadequate” and imposed tougher conditions, O’Rourke said.

Under the new conditions, the owner had to pay relocating tenants the costs of moving, including tear-down, set-up and hauling expenses plus $600. Those who wanted to get rid of their homes had to be offered $1,000, plus $100 for every year the tenant had lived in the park, plus 45% of the difference between the in-place and stand-alone value of the home, which came to an average of $5,500 per home, O’Rourke said.