Westlake Village : Vote Allows Mobile Home Park to Grow

Westlake Village voters Tuesday approved by a 60% to 40% margin a measure allowing a mobile home park to expand and begin selling spaces to tenants.

The measure’s passage allows the Oak Forest Mobile Estates to expand by 35 units, to 197, and begin offering park residents the chance to buy the spaces on which their mobile homes sit.

City officials hand-counted ballots in the special election, which drew 1,371 of the city’s 4,021 registered voters to the polls, and cost the city nearly $15,000, said City Manager James E. Emmons. The vote was 822 for the measure and 549 against it, he said.

Purchase of Spaces

The Westlake Village City Council last fall approved an ordinance that commits park owners and the city to work together to expand the park and allows tenants to purchase their spaces.

But the ordinance was challenged by a group of Westlake Village residents who said the expansion would spoil the view from their luxury Southridge Trails ridge-top homes. Led by Daniel Murphy, a wholesale carpet dealer, the Committee to Preserve, Protect and Maintain Westlake Village Zoning circulated petitions seeking to repeal the ordinance. The group gathered enough signatures to qualify the measure for the referendum.

Park Needed Measure

Had the measure failed, the mobile home park would have been unable to expand and would have been under no obligation to sell lots to tenants. City rent-control ordinances governing the park would have been phased out over the next five years, Emmons said.

“We accept the decision of the voters as part of the democratic process,” Murphy said.

“I’m pleased with the outcome,” said Karl Balke, president of Oak Forest Homeowners Assn. “My own personal desire is to buy my land and to live here for a very long time.”

The City Council adopted the ordinance as part of the settlement of a $1-million lawsuit filed against the city by the Oak Forest owners. The owners contended that rent-control laws, which applied only to the mobile home park, deprived them of their constitutional property rights.