Protecting Mobile Home Park Residents

* Kudos for your Jan. 24 article describing the discrimination settlement by the owners of Santa Ana’s Plaza Mobile Estates (“Settlement Is News at Mobile Home Park”). For many years, the owners and managers of our area’s mobile parks have utilized weak laws and an increasingly apathetic state Department of Housing to intimidate and discriminate against people from all walks of life seeking residency within their parks.

As an agent in a firm that has sold over 200 mobiles in the past few years, I have witnessed, first-hand, parks attempting to deny residency based upon race, age, sex, religion and sexual orientation. One need look no further than the Huntington Beach park, which a few weeks ago attempted to expel a woman who was caring for her son with AIDS, to realize that the park system cries out for serious and immediate change.

Since statistically one in every five of us will live in a mobile or have a relative who does, the time to rectify this situation has come. The $2-million settlement is a major step in the right direction. Hopefully, it sends a powerful message that each of us has earned the right to live in an environment free from the bigotry and hatred we should have left behind long ago.

SEAN P. MENO

Newport Beach