Q & A

* Westminster Councilman Tony Lam

After nearly three years of meetings and countless hours of debate, the Westminster City Council has passed an ordinance that gives mobile home residents more protection if a park closes or is converted to another use.

The council found itself in a difficult position, members said, trying to balance the interests of mobile home residents with those of park owners, who opposed further regulation.

Park owners who wish to convert their property must now find a comparable space for residents within 50 miles of Westminster, give monetary compensation to displaced residents and pay a daily allowance if they must stay in a hotel. Owners will also be fined if they give false notice of a pending conversion in an effort to drive residents out.

One of the measure’s chief proponents was Councilman Tony Lam, who had promised the ordinance to mobile home residents during his 1992 campaign. He spoke with Times correspondent John Pope about the issue. Q: Why was this ordinance necessary?

A: It is important because we have 18 mobile home parks here and 4,500 residents. We saw what could happen when there’s no protection. At Mission Del Amo three years ago, a group of investors bought the place, but they made a mistake and didn’t do any kind of feasibility study. But the owners sent out notices that the park was being converted, and people got very alarmed. Many moved their coaches away or abandoned them with no compensation at all. The park was never converted, and the [occupancy] there has dropped from 228 spaces to 140 spaces.

I wanted to see that people could get fair treatment and that they are not living in fear of being evicted without compensation.

Q: Why did that take so long?

A: It definitely shouldn’t have taken this long, but it did because of a lot of stalling and holding it off and study. Every time we put something out we had to have a meeting and study session. . . . If you read the minutes of the meetings you see that every time we talked about it, we had a lot of arguments.

Q: You’ve said that the process has taught you important lessons about political compromise. Could you explain that?

A: You have to be fair to both sides. We didn’t want the park owners to be subjected to an unreasonably costly operation if they had to change or convert the park, but on the other hand you’ve got to be fair and equitable to these citizens, who are mostly seniors. They don’t want to move far away from where they’ve settled, with amenities in the area and hospitals to take care of their health. Also, they have lifetime investments in the mobile home and a kind of lifestyle they’ve been led to believe would be there for the rest of their lives. I know [the ordinance] won’t please everybody, but I’m very happy to have done my part.