Mobile-Home Dwellers at Beach Have Overstayed Their Welcome

Re “El Morro Residents Labor to Stay Put,” Jan. 24:

If the residents who live in the El Morro Village mobile home park at Crystal Cove State Park really want to do something for the affordable-housing market, how about moving out now? This would give those of us who can’t afford the upscale hotels being built along our coast a place to camp per the 1982 general plan for that area.

It is outrageous that these same residents would even think of asking for a 30-year extension on their leases. They have already had 20 years since the 1982 plan. Also, what do they plan for those who live on the beach side of the highway? Leases for the rest of this century?

Marilyn Vassos

Irvine

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The newest ploy by the selfish, elite group of 295 El Morro trailer park tenants to continue to live on land that is owned by the people of California is outrageous.

After having the privilege of living in Crystal Cove State Park more than 20 years after the state bought the property, they still will resort to any means to stay on an additional 30 years rather than allowing the state to convert it to a public campground and beach facility to be enjoyed by all Californians. Their plan would allow them to stay on and have Laguna Beach use part of the land for low-income housing. This land belongs neither to the tenants nor to Laguna Beach.

For them to think that they could entice environmental organizations into supporting their plan by offering them money is degrading to those groups.

Neither is there any need for the funds they said they would contribute for the restoration of the Crystal Cove cottages. The funds are available from bond issues for that as well as for the conversion of the trailer park at El Morro.

It’s time for those fortunate tenants at the trailer park to drop their lawsuit and stop spending money to develop ever more onerous plans to continue to live there and let the rest of the people of California have a chance.

Fern Pickle

President,

Friends of Newport Coast

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Disingenuous is too kind a word to describe the plan put forward by the El Morro Village Community Assn. This is a transparent attempt to keep the public out of a public park. Let’s review the facts:

* The El Morro residents have been living on state park land for almost 25 years.

* During that time they have been paying absurdly low rents ($400 to $700 a month) and have been able to sublet their trailers for as much as $2,000 a week.

* They were given 20 years’ notice that they would have to vacate their trailers and were then given an additional five years (until the end of 2004).

* Their faulty septic tanks, leach field, and urban runoff have degraded El Morro Canyon and Creek and have caused water-quality problems at the beach.

* Although El Morro beach is accessible via the parking lot about a half-mile to the north, the hike involved and the presence of the trailers makes this a de facto private beach.

* The plan by the state parks system would remove the trailers, restore the creek bed, remove paving, end sources of pollution and open this portion of Crystal Cove State Park to all the people of California, not just a few.

An environmental study of the state park plan has been approved. This plan is supported by a large coalition of environmental groups. We taxpayers have been subsidizing the El Morro residents and have been prevented from using this land for years. Now the residents want to extend their favored status for 30 more years by bribing environmental groups and the state parks system and proposing additional “politically correct” uses for land that they don’t own.

If I lived there, I would want to stay too, but enough is enough! The state park plan will vastly improve the environment and allow the park to be used and enjoyed as intended. I urge the Laguna Beach City Council to support the state park plan and reject the El Morro Village Community Assn. plan.

Rick Wilson

Chairman,

Laguna Beach Chapter

Surfrider Foundation

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It is arrogant and selfish for the renters at El Morro to continue to fight to remain at Crystal Cove. It is time to turn the beautiful park over to the public for all to enjoy. State parks are not the proper place to put affordable housing, no matter how noble it appears.

John Lawsdale

Newport Beach