SANTA PAULA : Mobile Home Lease Ban Is Overturned

Ruling on a Santa Paula case, a state appeals court has decided that mobile home parks can prohibit residents from subleasing their coaches only if it is a condition of the original lease.

The decision overturns a ruling by Ventura County Superior Court Judge Barbara A. Lane involving the Rancho Santa Paula Mobile Home Park. Lane ruled that the park could forbid mobile home owners from leasing their coaches and that the rule could be retroactive.

The mobile home park had sought in the trial court to stop coach owner Barbara J. Evans from leasing her trailer to Dolores Erb. The park imposed the no-lease rule in July, 1992, one month after Evans began leasing to Erb.

In reversing Lane’s ruling, the Ventura-based 2nd District Court of Appeal, on a 2-1 vote this week, found that imposing a no-lease law on coach owners already leasing space in the park is “unreasonable.”

“Because of the home’s immobility, an owner who finds living in the park no longer desirable, practical, or possible, would be forced to either sell his home or leave it vacant,” the appeals court ruling said.

Justice Kenneth R. Yegan, however, in a minority opinion, wrote that although the state’s Mobile Home Residency Law does not address subleasing, it was written to give “park management some control over long-term residents of the mobile home park.”

“Subletting, without the consent of management, may result in a deterioration in the quality of the rented mobile home and the mobile home common areas,” Yegan wrote.