GARDEN GROVE : Rent Freeze Rejected for Trailer Park

The City Council rejected a second plea for rent control from angry residents of a mobile home park who have watched their monthly payments soar more than 60% in the last 13 months.

With more than 100 residents of the Del Prado Mobile Home Park overflowing its chambers, the City Council refused to impose a rent moratorium on Del Prado’s owners, saying such an ordinance would have to apply to all 15 trailer parks in the city.

“We seem to have a problem in this particular mobile home park,” Councilman Robert F. Dinsen said after listening to two hours of stories from residents protesting the $430 monthly payment. “But the solution is not to pass a rent moratorium on all 15 parks if we have a problem in only one.”

Vicki Talley, executive director of Manufactured Housing Educational Trust, a group of trailer park owners, said the rent increases at Del Prado were simply upward adjustments that brought the park’s rate closer to Garden Grove’s market rate. Since December, 1990, when the rent was $270, the owners have boosted it $85 in 1991 and $75 this year.

Residents of the trailer park on West Avenue asked the council at a hearing in early December to bar more rent increases; the council did not act on that request.

Since then, residents and the owners, Tatum & Kaplan Financial of Westwood, have been unable to agree on a lease to set future rent rates.

Residents said they fear that rent increases could drive them from the park or force them to give up their homes.

But council members stood their ground, repeatedly telling residents that the council will not use a blanket moratorium to solve a private dispute.

“I don’t want to mislead anyone here,” Councilman Mark Leyes said to residents who shouted angrily at the council all evening. “You are not going to get a rent moratorium from this council.”

Many of the residents are retired and say they cannot afford rent increases while living on a limited income, much less pay thousands of dollars to have their trailers moved to another park.

Ann Soyka, a park resident, told the council that without a moratorium, residents feel locked into talks under legal limits they cannot understand, in a dispute that they will surely lose.

“We need you help,” Soyka told the council. “We just want to understand what is going on.”

As a consolation, the council voted, 4 to 1, to order the city manager to oversee the next negotiating session between residents and owners, tentatively scheduled for Thursday.