Residents Mobilize

When Eduardo Frutos saw Golden Sun Homes’ ad in the Pennysaver, he thought he had finally found the ideal situation for his family.

The ad said he could own a new, four-bedroom mobile home for only a $1,500 down payment and combined rent and mortgage payments of less than $800 a month.

Only after he bought the mobile home from Golden Sun and moved into Katella Mobile Home Estates and a second contract arrived did Frutos learn the rates advertised were not all he had to pay.

In a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court in October, Frutos’ family and 33 others, mostly working-class Latinos, allege that Golden Sun and Katella engaged in fraud that cost them their homes, thousands of dollars in legal fees and ruined their credit.

In most cases, the suit says, buyers such as the Frutoses signed two sales contracts, one with the $1,500 down payment and a second, which was sent to the finance company, at a figure several times higher. The plaintiffs moved into the park before their loans were approved and, once in, they discovered their combined rent and mortgage payments were nearly twice the amount they had been promised.

The finance company, Oakwood Acceptance, is also named as a defendant.

All the families, who bought their homes in 1995, have defaulted on their loans and moved out.

Most of the plaintiffs have rejected a settlement from Katella and Golden Sun that would void their contracts and restore their credit ratings but not pay them any damages.

“Every one of us lost homes we thought would be ours forever,” said Sharon Nelson, 50, who defaulted on her home in October.

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Attorneys for Golden Sun, Katella and Oakwood did not return several calls. Neither did the plaintiffs’ attorney, Larry Noe. But in court documents, Golden Sun and Katella dispute the plaintiffs’ contentions. They say the buyers should have been more careful about what they were signing.

This is not the first time residents of the park have had problems. For years they have asked the Stanton City Council for a rent control ordinance, saying owner Marsha Carter has raised rents while letting the park fall into disrepair.

Frutos, 42, moved his wife and four children into Katella two years ago. Sales representatives told him Katella was the least expensive mobile home park in the area, Frutos said, and that his rent and mortgage payments would never exceed $800.

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Golden Sun sold Frutos the mobile home and moved it to Katella before the loan was approved. When the paperwork arrived from the lender, Oakwood Acceptance, Frutos learned he owed a $7,000 down payment, instead of the $1,500.

He also learned that the rent and mortgage payments totaled $600 more than he had been told.

The plaintiffs said they were promised copies of the agreements they signed with Golden Sun and that they would have 72 hours in which to cancel the sales. The paperwork never arrived, they said.

In October, Frutos defaulted on the loan, moved out of the mobile home and into an apartment in Stanton. In the last few months, the other 33 families involved in the lawsuit have also defaulted.

Sharon and Michael Nelson said the first contract they saw said they needed to pay $1,000 to move into a double-wide in space 860 at Katella. Several weeks after moving in, the Nelsons received a second contract in the mail that said their down payment was $9,465.

The Nelsons said their concerns were ignored by the owner of the mobile home park and Golden Sun.

They also found out that their combined rent and mortgage payments were more than $1,300 a month, instead of the $800 a month Golden Sun had promised.

The Nelsons said they did not know they were signing a second contract because the salespeople told them it was a sheet outlining rules and regulations and was not important.

According to the defendants, those who moved into Katella should have paid more attention to what they were signing.

Many of the plaintiffs, however, said they didn’t know what they were signing because they don’t read English.

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Jesus Hernandez and Erasmo Jimenez agreed that moving their families back to apartments after living in the mobile homes has been the hardest part of their experience.

Both abandoned furniture in the mobile homes because they don’t have enough room in their apartments to hold everything they own.

“This happened to us because we believed they were telling us the truth,” said Hernandez, a 38-year-old factory worker. “I never thought they would have been lying.”