Battle Over Props. 199, 193

Re “The Maverick at Center of Mobile Home Rent Battle,” Feb. 16: In 1968 we made a decision to sell our home and move into a mobile home park. At that time the rent was lower than our house payments, and it seemed a safe place to prepare for retirement. Had we stayed in our home, the mortgage would be clear; instead, the rental on our space has more than doubled, and it will continue to rise, even with rent control. We are some of the lucky ones, as our owners are not cut from the same cloth as Jeffrey Kaplan, but the fact remains that we have a sizable investment in our double-wide mobile home, but our “mortgage” increases and will never be paid off.

Our only recourse is to fight Prop. 199. Kaplan has gotten wealthy on the backs of the poor, and there is no place where we can take our mobile homes. Our hope is that we will gain support in defeating this horrible proposition with help from all who oppose greed.

JANE E. ZIMMERMAN

Newbury Park

* Wake up, baby boomers! Wake up, Generation X (or anyone else who bought a home after 1975)! The bandits who looted California with Prop. 13 forgot that they left a lump of coal in the fireplace and have come back to sweep house with Prop. 193. The audacious unfairness of Prop. 13 is mind-boggling. Why should I pay three times the property tax as my neighbors and receive exactly the same state and county services?

Further, why should my neighbors’ children, who may inherent their houses, continue to pay one-third the taxes I do for those services? Prop. 193 applies the final, insulting coup de grace by allowing property transfers to grandchildren so they don’t have to pay the same, inflated taxes the rest of us pay. I’m thrilled at the prospect of shouldering the tax burden for my neighbors’ grandchildren well into the 21st century.

Why do we put up with this shameless tax inequity?

LEE E. MYLES

Glendale