Metzger Finds Door Closed at Mobile Home Park Since He Lacks Income : Housing: Having lost Fallbrook home to court settlement, white supremacist and his wife seek to buy in park but are rejected because of finances.

White supremacist Tom Metzger, ousted from his Fallbrook home because of a $5-million court judgment involving a racially motivated killing, has been rejected by a small mobile home park.

Metzger had set his eyes on living in the Valley Oaks Mobile Ranch, a 212-space mobile home park nestled beneath the live oak and pine trees that border the 14th tee of the Pala Mesa Golf Course on the southeast side of Fallbrook.

“It’s a nice, cool, rustic place and (as a television repairman) I’ve been working for people in that park for 20 years. Now I’d like to live there,” Metzger said Tuesday by phone from a Los Angeles courthouse, where he is on trial for a cross-burning.

But his and his wife’s application to rent a space there has been turned down by the park’s owners.

The rejection has nothing to do with Metzger’s racial hate campaign through his White Aryan Resistance movement, the park’s attorney says. It’s just that the court judgment leaves Metzger without a steady income to pay the $460-a-month rent.

“They don’t have any money. Five words. They don’t have any money,” said Jim P. Mahacek, the Santa Ana attorney representing the partnership that owns the 30-year-old park.

Mahacek said Metzger’s wife, Kathleen, applied Oct. 1 to move into the park, listing her income as $2,000 a month as an employee of White Point Publishing, which printed WAR’s literature.

But Mahacek said it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that White Point had been seized in connection with the court judgment last year, when a Portland jury found in a civil trial that Metzger and WAR had incited two skinheads to murder an Ethiopian man, 27-year-old Mulugeta Seraw, three years ago. Of the entire $12.5-million judgment against Metzger, his son John and WAR, Metzger personally was ordered to pay $5 million.

Civil rights attorney Morris Dees, who sued Metzger in the Portland case, said at the time he hoped the judgment would all but put Metzger’s racial hate business out of business.

Metzger’s largest asset was his Fallbrook home of 20 years and, several weeks ago, it was awarded to Seraw’s estate, thereby reducing Metzger’s debt by $121,500.

But Metzger received $45,000 from the sale in his homesteader allowance, which he said he was willing to apply towards “months of rent” in advance. He is now renting a place in Fallbrook but he says he wants to find something more permanent.

“I had the cash money to pay for the trailer (for sale within the park) and to pay for . . . six months’ rent,” Metzger said.

But he conceded that he hadn’t offered to advance the money.

It wouldn’t have made any difference, Mahacek said.

“Let’s assume he paid five years up front,” Mahacek hypothesized. “What if he turns around in the next four months and files for bankruptcy, which is a definite concern here. We’d have to give the money back to the trustee in the bankruptcy, yet he’d still be in our park, and we couldn’t get him out.”

Mahacek said he needs evidence of a steady income.

“Our position is, he’s like any other applicant for tenancy. He made his application, we did our investigation, and he didn’t pass. His problems are his problems. One of two things will now happen: Either he’ll send us additional documents for us to review (on his income), or he won’t, and that will be the end of the story.”

Metzger says he hasn’t looked elsewhere for a place to live. “Maybe I’ll reapply,” he said.

The prospect of Metzger as a neighbor met with mixed reactions at Valley Oaks Mobile Ranch.

“I’d be appalled,” said June Walton. “I don’t want that (expletive) near me.”

Another resident, Al Linn, said Metzger might prove “disruptive.”

Guyla Toll, who has lived there for 21 years, said the park already has gone “downhill” with the arrival of families with children. “As long as he’s financially able to pay the rent and obeys the rules, they can’t keep him out,” she said.

Eighty-seven-year-old Franklin Cassen, a 17-year park resident, said having Metzger as a neighbor wouldn’t faze him one bit.

“I was practically born and raised in the South, and my sympathies go in the direction of Mr. Metzger,” the Tennessee native said. “I don’t believe that whites and blacks will ever get along together.”

For his part, park manager J. R. Thomas thought Metzger might prove an asset to the park: “I’ve heard that every place he lives, there’s no crime or violence.”