Survey to Determine Mobile-Home Issues

Despite some skeptics on the City Council, the city will spend $15,000 for a survey to determine the issues affecting mobile-home park residents and park owners.

The City Council has approved spending the money for the telephone survey, to be conducted by Lawrence Research in Santa Ana.

Councilmen Dave Garofalo and Peter Green opposed the action, questioning whether the survey is necessary.

Garofalo suggested that mobile-home residents and park owners should chip in to help cover the cost of the survey and also said he does not agree with the survey in principle. “We are putting ourselves in the middle of a debate between renters and landlords,” he said.

The city’s nine-member Mobile Home Review Committee requested that the survey be done, however, as a benefit to the committee. In 1993, the council established the panel for 18 months to examine issues related to mobile-home park ownership and residency.

The council decided to make the committee permanent last June.

City officials said about 10% of the estimated 4,000 residents living in 17 mobile-home parks in Huntington Beach are expected to be surveyed so the panel can identify the most important issues, said Mark Porter, committee chairman.

Some issues already being studied, he said, are rent increases, upkeep of parks and relations between tenants and park management.