New Law Designed to Keep Mobile Home Parks Open

In an attempt to preserve low-cost housing in Santa Clarita, the City Council has passed an ordinance designed to make it more difficult to close mobile home parks.

But owners of the 17 mobile home parks in the city are divided on how the ordinance will affect their parks and the lives of more than 2,000 tenants.

Some park owners said the measure lacks teeth and would not stop them from shutting down mobile home parks if they wanted to develop more lucrative businesses on their properties. Others angrily said the city has taken away their rights to develop their land as they please.

“It cuts in half the value of the land,” said Judith Porcasi, who is a co-owner of a park in Soledad Canyon.

“They are going to stop us from closing,” said Asa Shaw, owner of a small mobile home park in Newhall. Shaw said he bought the land as an investment 20 years ago and had hoped to use it for a commercial project eventually.

The measure, which was approved by a 4-0 vote Tuesday night, creates a classification for mobile home parks in the city’s zoning ordinances but does not automatically place existing parks in new zones.

Mobile home parks in the city are now located in areas zoned for commercial, agricultural or other uses. The parks are allowed to operate in these zones on special permits that can be modified or discontinued.

The creation of mobile home park zones will give park residents at least some assurances that their parks will not be closed, because the land could be used only for that purpose, city officials said. Council members said the law does not compel park owners to have their properties rezoned now solely as mobile home parks, although the council could decide to change zoning in individual cases at some later time.

Park owners should be able to choose the zoning for their property, Mayor Jo Anne Darcy said. “It’s the American way,” Darcy said. Two park owners have expressed an interest in rezoning their property solely for mobile homes, city officials said.

But Shaw, Porcasi and other park owners said the ordinance offers no guarantees that their property rights would be respected.

The ordinance was prompted by the closure of the 60-space Desert Gardens Mobile Home Park in 1988 to make way for a shopping center. Mobile home park residents said other landowners would be tempted to shut down their parks as well and asked the City Council to develop ways to preserve the parks.