Mobile Home Residents Play Key Role in Carson : Government: With a council majority favoring its positions, citizens’ group is city’s most influential lobbyist.

The fortunes of many Carson political leaders aren’t determined in the boardrooms of the city’s oil companies, developers or trash haulers.

Instead, such decisions are largely made by the low- and fixed-income residents of Carson’s mobile home parks, who have become the city’s most influential lobby.

The group representing mobile home residents, Homeowners Against Rent Decontrol, is widely credited with fueling the recent City Council election victories of incumbent Mayor Michael I. Mitoma and Planning Commissioner Pete Fajardo. HARD accounted for voter turnouts as high as 56% in precincts limited to mobile home parks, compared to turnouts as low as 10.7% in precincts with no parks.

HARD’s leaders routinely scrutinize campaign contributions to council members and candidates for money from park owners, and they research whether donations have been funneled through third parties.

HARD officials said council members’ acceptance of such contributions indicates a bias in favor of park owners, who have long outspent the residents’ group. Last November, the organization hired a private investigator whose report about alleged conflict of interest by Planning Commissioner Francisco (Frank) Gutierrez led to his resignation.

Recently, the group tailed Councilwoman Kay Calas, whom HARD unsuccessfully tried to oust in the April 14 election, to determine whether she lives in Carson or Torrance.

The HARD investigation concluded that Calas lives part time in both cities, but Calas, who owns several properties in Torrance, said she has lived full time in the same Carson house for 46 years. “I call it frightening when they have me under surveillance and have me followed,” Calas said.

But Connie Hathaway, chairwoman of HARD, said such methods are necessary to defend the interests of park residents.

“To what lengths will we go? We will go until we find out the truth, whatever it takes, and it will all be legal,” Hathaway said. “If you’re doing something you don’t want people to find out about, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”

HARD is a legacy of the controversy that followed a 1988 ballot measure proposed by mobile home park owners that would have overturned the city’s rent control law. The measure failed to make it to the ballot because of a dispute over the validity of petition signatures and heated opposition from residents.

Hathaway was instrumental in forming HARD, which began as a loose-knit group of senior citizens that had been fighting park owners for a decade and evolved into a 4,000-member watchdog group for mobile home issues.

“We have proven to the city that we’re not just a bunch of radicals who are going to go away like every other group has; we’re not going to go away,” said Hathaway, 53, an iron-willed accountant who refers to single-family houses as “stick-built” homes.

Nowhere in the South Bay have mobile home residents been as active in local politics as in Carson, according to representatives of the mobile home park industry. There are 2,650 households in Carson’s 27 mobile home parks, the most of any South Bay city, and HARD easily packs the council chambers when mobile home issues are discussed.

Not surprisingly, HARD’s efforts have earned the enmity of park owners, who have been embroiled in numerous legal battles with the city over rent control and park closures. Park owners assert that the residents have a stranglehold on the city and intimidate council members into following HARD’s agenda.

“What you have in Carson is a single-issue constituency that represents 5% of the population and 10% of the electorate that has firm control of the city,” said Carolyn Carlburg, an attorney who represents the owners of six Carson mobile home parks.

“There’s no doubt they really do have complete control. But their agenda has pretty much dominated the scene there since 1979, when the rent control ordinance was passed. The ordinances and regulations that have been passed since that time bear that out.”

Although HARD has been largely successful, the group has also had its defeats. HARD fought unsuccessfully to remove Calas from the council in the recent election and failed to win approval for an ordinance that would have created a special zone for mobile home parks that would have made it all but impossible to close them.

However, HARD was impressive in the election for three council seats, delivering about 620 votes for Fajardo and Mitoma in three precincts consisting entirely of mobile home parks. The two finished about 700 votes ahead of Calas, who placed third, according to election results. Mitoma and Fajardo also enjoyed strong support in at least four other precincts that include mobile home parks.

“I am fortunate I was supported by HARD,” said Fajardo, who was elected to the council this month in his first run for office. “They are very well-organized, they work very hard. . . . Obviously, the support meant the difference. It really was crucial to my victory.”

That support arises from the group’s methodical approach to city politics. A HARD representative attends every City Council, Planning Commission and Rental Review Board meeting. Most mobile home parks have their own homeowners associations set up apart from HARD that regularly meet with HARD leaders. And the group publishes a quarterly newsletter about mobile home issues, including a special edition on candidate endorsements, distributed in all of Carson’s mobile home parks.

“They have an effective communication network,” said Councilwoman Sylvia Muise. She said she was overwhelmingly elected in 1982 because of the efforts of mobile home residents, many of whom are now actively involved in HARD.

“They hold regular meetings, their executive board is well-informed on city issues; they put a lot of effort into it, and not just around election time,” Muise said.

Since its inception in 1988, the organization has raised more than $52,000. But the group’s spending has been dwarfed by that of the park owners, who spent about $31,000 in the last weeks of the election to unsuccessfully target HARD-backed candidates with glossy mailers.

HARD spent about $350 on the last election to pay for a newsletter and flyers, Hathaway said.

At stake in the last election was the makeup of the council that will interpret state and city laws governing how much mobile home residents will be paid in relocation costs when parks are closed. With the election of Mitoma and Fajardo, HARD is assured of a council majority favoring the group’s position that residents should be paid full market value for their mobile homes when parks close.

Carlburg said full market value is unreasonable and violates a state statute governing closure of mobile home parks. She said her clients are required to pay only moving costs.

Over the last several years, three mobile home parks have closed in Carson, and two others are in the process of closing. Michelle Brooks, a spokeswoman for Western Mobilehome Assn., a trade and lobby group for park owners, predicts that more parks will close.

“I think that more and more park owners are getting frustrated,” Brooks said. The city is “trying to protect people by putting these ordinances in. But at the same time, they are putting such a squeeze on the park owners, they may find themselves losing more parks.”

Additionally, attorneys for several Carson park owners said litigation will continue over park closures and rent control. Half a dozen state and federal lawsuits by park owners against Carson were on hold until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that upheld local rent control laws even when mobile home tenants sell their homes to new buyers.

Although that ruling was favorable to park residents, attorneys for park owners say that the decision was narrow in scope and that they plan to continue challenging rent control laws in the courts.

Meanwhile, Hathaway, who has lived in the same mobile home park since 1973, said her group will continuing fighting on behalf of park residents. Her mother lives in a mobile home park that is in the process of closing. And, Hathaway said, the group will be prepared for others.

“We’ll say, ‘Fine, you can do whatever you want to with your property,’ ” Hathaway said. “But we’re still gonna get our fair market value for our homes. If my home is worth $39,000, then dammit, that’s what I’m gonna get for my home. You have to stand up and fight for what you believe in.”