LAGUNA BEACH : Mobile Home Park Renters Taking Title

Tucked against a hillside on Laguna Canyon Road is the oldest, smallest and, some say, luckiest mobile home park in Laguna Beach.

Not much grumbling goes on at Thurston Trailer Park about the lack of a clubhouse, swimming pool or ocean view--niceties available at the city’s two other mobile home parks.

Instead, Thurston residents, most of whom have incomes low enough to qualify for financial aid, feel pretty fortunate. They are doing something that residents of many larger mobile home parks haven’t been able to do: They are buying their park.

The residents’ low-income status has, in part, enabled them to package a $1.5-million deal that Mayor Robert F. Gentry has called “a landmark case for the city.” With $650,000 from the Department of Housing and Community Development’s Mobile Home Resident Ownership Program, they expect to take title to their park by March.

When they do, the plan will be simple: Don’t change a thing. Their neighborhood may be cramped, but they can walk to the ocean, count on their neighbors and look forward to a future without steadily rising rents.

“Live and let live; that’s our motto,” said Sam Alessi, who spearheaded the drive to buy the park. “We want to keep it just like it is.”

The ambience at Thurston is quite different from that at the gated Treasure Island Mobile Home Park, the city’s largest, where 266 mobile home lots are sprawled along the top of an ocean bluff.

What residents have at Thurston is “country living,” said John Connor, who has lived in the park for 15 years.

There is no visitor parking at Thurston, much less a protective gate. Potholes mar the pavement that leads to the 26 mobile homes and three cottages, which are clustered together, often with no more than a shred of land separating households.

And because Thurston is in a hollow between hills, nature also toys with the rustic community, say residents, who are accustomed to wind whipping through the canyon and to days shortened by tardy sunrises and premature sunsets.

In addition, because they are near the grounds for three summer festivals, life gets pretty crazy for two months of the year, Alessi said. Residents are compensated for their inconvenience with free season-long passes from the Sawdust Festival. The rest of the year, it’s pretty quiet.

“We see both of what Laguna has to offer--the peace and tranquillity, and the madness,” Alessi said.

While rents at the park--which Alessi said range from about $450 to $550--are not high by Orange County standards, some residents say anything higher would have forced them from their homes.

Donella Parks, who is disabled and spends all but $156 of her monthly Social Security check on rent, described the park’s purchase as a godsend. Parks suffers from agoraphobia, a condition that creates panic attacks and can render a victim housebound. She was terrified that she would be pushed onto the streets by rising rents.

“That was my biggest fear,” Parks said. “How I prayed at night, ‘Please don’t let this happen.’ ”

Now the future is less frightening. “We’ll be our own bosses,” she said.