Knowing Mobile Homeowners’ Fate and Feeling All the More Sad

As I strolled down the slurry-sealed alleys of the Del Prado Mobile Home Park in Garden Grove looking for the manager’s coach, I could not detect the signs of civic struggle.

For a pleasant and well-maintained park, home to 270 residents, this one was too quiet. Older-model cars rested silently under awnings protruding from each home. The sounds of television dialogue and commercial jingles seeped out of many coaches. A cleaning truck weaved along the roadways watering down the warm asphalt.

I continued walking past rows of mobile homes when a voice said to me, “I remember you from the City Council meeting.”

I stepped through some hedges to get a closer look at Donald Edginger, who was relaxing on his shaded porch smoking a cigarette. The 81-year-old peered at me from under the brim of his cross-hatched straw hat.

“Come on up and sit down,” he said.

The only other time I had seen Edginger was at a City Council meeting last month when he and his neighbors had filled the council chambers to beg for help. Their plea was one that echoes in many other city council hearing rooms from mobile home owners in a similar predicament. As I leaned against the wall writing in my notebook that night, I knew what would happen and I felt bad for the people it was happening to.

In September of 1990, the residents of the Del Prado park had watched the land’s ownership change hands. Shortly after that, a 60-day notice began appearing in mailboxes announcing a substantial rent increase of $85 to their $270 payments. The second rent increase, which went into effect the first of this year, inflated most resident’s payments to about $430 per month --almost a 60% increase since the new owners took over.

Edginger is living with his wife on $1,200 per month in Social Security and disability checks from the Veteran’s Administration. His inflated rent payments have gouged his already tenuous budget, which includes maintenance of his home, living expenses and medical costs. He said that some of his neighbors, feeling the pinch, had gone to the council for relief. Others had picked up and left.

That night at the council chambers, a lone representative of the park management told the council that rents were raised to bring the park rates closer to the monthly rate of other parks in the city. And, of course, as owners they have the right to do just that. The City Council predictably dismissed out of hand a drastic measure to control rents at the one park, reasoning that any measure must also apply to each of Garden Grove’s 15 other trailer parks.

Several city officials called it a “lose-lose situation,” adding that the city’s “hands are tied.”

More than a month after that council decision, I went to the park to see how one of the so-called “losers” was taking it. And this day, Edginger was content to enjoy the peaceful weather and wait for his wife to return with groceries.

“When I came here 18 years ago I was known as the baby of the park,” he said. At that time, Edginger had opted for retirement at age 63 after working as a steam engineer at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. He and his wife then moved into a 1969 model aluminum mobile home when the park’s rent was $85 per month. “It used to be like a big family here in this park. I had thought that I could live my retirement years here and die here.”

But now, like several of his neighbors, he has contemplated leaving the park for a cheaper place to park his home.

“I have thought of moving to the high desert. Out there, rents can run about $150 per month,” he said. “But the problem is that it is too far away from everything. I have had cancer and heart problems, I need to be near where the hospitals are.”

He leaned forward in his chair and pointed over my shoulder.

“Right there,” he said fingering a mobile home with a ‘For Sale’ sign in the window and a red ‘Sold’ sticker under that. “A 90-year-old widow lived there. She sold her place yesterday and moved in with her family after rent became too high.”

He said the neighbor who once lived on his other flank had been forced to leave months ago for the warm days and cold nights of the desert climate.

“This has ruined all of our lives,” he added.

The residents and park owners are planning to sit down at the negotiating table to talk money within the next month or so. But the owners have made no indication that rents would be scaled back below the market rate.

My pleasant chat with Edginger that afternoon had pulled me from behind the shield that reporters use to distance themselves from the emotional turmoil of a news event. But I walked out of the park with the same sadness I felt a month earlier at City Hall.