City to contest suit over mobile homes

Residents in a Huntington Beach mobile-home park are relieved that city officials have decided to fight a lawsuit seeking to change the city’s 2004 mobile-home ordinance.

Steve Gullage, president of the Huntington Beach Mobile Home Owners Assn., thinks the residents had a lot of input in the city’s decision to fight the lawsuit, which was filed by the mobile-home park’s owners. The mobile-home park owners filed the lawsuit to overturn the city’s 2004 ordinance that places restrictions on them before they can sell the land for development.

“They [mobile-home owners] were able to let the council know the fear and terror of losing their home and their life savings,” Gullage said.

Mayor Dave Sullivan agreed.

“The obvious angst and pain felt by these people [mobile-home owners] who expressed it in public comments” helped convince council members to battle the lawsuit, Sullivan said. “After all, they could lose their home and all.”

The three local mobile-home parks and an industry representative suing the city may want to convert the mobile-home park land for business or other land uses, although none has immediate plans to do so, according to a letter to the city from Vickie Talley, director of the Huntington Beach Mobile Home Park Owners.

“The city has rebuffed our interest in discussing the constitutionally offensive portions of the statute,” said Michael Leifer, an attorney with Irvine law firm Palmieri Tyler, who is representing park owners.

“We have a situation where the city has decided that there’s a number of voters in mobile-home parks and they need special protection,” he said. “They get protection that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

“If and when it may be appropriate some years down the road for a park to close” mobile homeowners will be paid reasonable relocation costs as mandated by state law, according to Talley.

The city’s 2004 ordinance makes park owners pay mobile home owners for relocation costs within a 20-mile radius.

Homeowners were worried that negotiations between the city and park owners would scale down those protections.

Those provisions include moving and transportation costs, and the living expenses of displaced residents during the move.

The council voted to stop negotiations, begun in August, with attorneys representing park owners after City Attorney Jennifer McGrath reported “zero progress” in talks with park owners, Sullivan said.

Councilwoman Cathy Green said the initial negotiations with the park owners were to see if park owners were willing to settle.

“It’s our ordinance; there really wasn’t much doubt about what we were going to do — we had to defend it,” she said.

Mobile-home owners were also successful in lobbying for support from Huntington Beach Tomorrow, a local organization.

“Defense of the ordinance should be proactive, vigorous and continuous,” the organization’s President Ed Kerins said.