L. B. to Enter Rent Battle Between Mobile Home Park and Tenants

LONG BEACH — For Fern Alward, every penny counts. Each month, the 76-year-old widow struggles to make ends meet with her $500 Social Security check.

There are doctor bills, insurance payments, groceries and the monthly rent she pays for a space in Villa Park, a North Long Beach mobile home community. Her life is strictly defined by the limits of her income.

Now, however, a series of rent increases at the park threatens to shatter the great-grandmother’s budget.

“I’m very bitter and terribly upset,” said Alward, whose $250 rent now amounts to exactly half of her income. “It’s like I’m dangling at the end of a rope and don’t know where I’m going to land. I have no place to go.”

Alward is one of scores of residents at Villa Park who are up in arms over rent increases of more than 40% since last June. The residents say the increases are unfair, particularly for retirees who are on fixed incomes.

But the park’s leaseholder says the increases are necessary and have been instituted to meet the rising costs of operating Villa Park.

Many members of the 57-acre mobile home community have united to oppose the increases, forming a group that ultimately hopes to institute some form of rent control at the park.

“We feel like these rent increases are only the beginning,” said Beth Wilburn, business manager of the newly organized Mobilehome Owners Assn. of Villa Park Inc. “People are panicking. They don’t know what to expect next.”

So far, the group’s tactics have included refusing to pay a $35 rent increase instituted Jan. 1 and deploying pickets--many of them placard-bearing senior citizens confined to wheelchairs or reliant upon walkers--along the park’s Atlantic Avenue entrance.

The group has also raised $20,000 and hired an attorney. And on Feb. 25, the group plans to ask the Long Beach City Council to adopt a citywide rent control ordinance for mobile home parks.

Council Opposes Controls

In the past, the Long Beach City Council has steadfastly opposed any form of rent control, for mobile homes or any other type of housing.

While the council did agree in mid-1984 to establish an arbitration board to settle disputes in mobile home parks, the group has yet to meet because Mayor Ernie Kell said he had been unable to find a chairman respected by both tenants and park owners.

Kell announced on Thursday, however, that the Rev. Richard Andersen, pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Long Beach, has agreed to take the post.

When the seven-member arbitration board gears up in the coming weeks, it should prove useful in the Villa Park dispute, Kell said. Nonetheless, he stressed that the group was not designed to serve as “a rent arbitration board.”

For longtime residents of Villa Park, the sudden rent increases and resulting revolt have seemed decidedly out of character for their community. The park, established in the late 1950s, has generally been a peaceful place, crisscrossed by narrow boulevards with names like Tiki Walk, Polynesian Drive and Hula Lane, and boasting numerous amenities--a swimming pool, two clubhouses, a community newsletter.

Solitude Disrupted

The residents, more than 90% of them retirees, normally get along fine, carefully tending to the white rock gardens or grassy plots outside their trailer coaches and enjoying bridge games or other activities.

But that solitude was disrupted, Wilburn and other residents say, soon after Villa Park was taken over by Louis Simpson, who purchased a 28-year lease in March, 1985.

In June, Simpson imposed a $50 rent increase. “We swallowed that, but no sooner had we got it down than he raised our rents $35 in January,” Wilburn said. Residents, most of whom had been paying about $200 a month to live in Villa Park, suddenly saw their rent bills rise to about $285.

Simpson explained to residents in a Jan. 20 letter that the increases were necessary to help cover skyrocketing costs for liability insurance, taxes and other operating expenses.

In the letter, Simpson said that liability insurance jumped from $26,000 a year to $115,000 while taxes rose from $26,000 to more than $38,000. Simpson also noted that he repaved the maze of roadways in the park, a project that he says cost $165,000.

‘Not Inappropriate’

Simpson could not be reached for comment. Steve Kirby, a Hermosa Beach attorney who represents the park operator, said Simpson is not trying to gouge the park’s residents but rather is attempting to avoid running in the red.

“I’m confident that if you balance the out-of-pocket expenses Louis has had to pay you’ll find that the increase is not inappropriate,” Kirby said, adding that the park’s rents are equitable when compared to those at other parks in the area.

Although Wilburn’s group claims to represent tenants in 300 of Villa Park’s 432 spaces, Kirby questioned just how many of them are challenging the rent increases, maintaining that “more than 50%” of the community’s estimated 700 residents have paid the increases.

Nonetheless, Kirby said, he is eager to hammer out a solution by meeting with the attorney who has been retained by the group.

“I think it’s a communication problem,” Kirby said. “I think some time and some more explanation will iron it out.”

Easy Solution Called Unlikely

Wilburn, however, said an easy solution will be hard to come by. As she sees it, the recent rent increases are only the beginning--and residents have to act now before it’s too late.

Members of the group paint a picture of Simpson as a land speculator who is eager to recoup the $6.3 million he paid to purchase the Villa Park lease. Because of that, they say, they worry that rents will go even higher.

Compounding the situation for the park’s tenants is the fact that mobile homes simply are not very mobile, Wilburn said. While apartment renters can easily pack their bags and move, it costs owners of a mobile home up to $8,000 to move a trailer coach, which almost always has an attached patio, porch and other comforts of home.

Also, many parks now only allow new coaches to move in, making it nearly impossible for residents to find a parking place anywhere “but out in the desert,” Wilburn said.

While none of the residents are happy about the rent increases, there are those who have refused to join Wilburn’s group.

Lease Buy-Out Urged

One contingent, led by park resident Pete Ide, insists that efforts to challenge Simpson in court will be fruitless. Ide, president of the Villa Park chapter of the Golden State Mobilehome Owners League, has proposed instead that the community’s residents join forces to buy out the lease.

Ide said his group is receiving assistance in its quest from the Los Angeles Community Design Center, a nonprofit group that helps low-income residents form housing cooperatives.

By purchasing the park, the tenants would be able to stabilize their rents and get a grip on their economic future, Ide said, adding that his group would like to begin negotiations to buy the park within a few weeks.

Villa Park is not the first mobile home community in Long Beach with such a plan. At Belmont Shores Mobile Estates, a 347-space park near Loynes Drive, residents have been working for the past 18 months to buy the facility because of fears it will be sold and their rents will skyrocket.

Carolyn Chean, chairman of the resident group trying to buy the park, said property values in the trendy Belmont Shore area have risen dramatically in recent decades while rents at the mobile home park have remained relatively low. Because of that, the park is “a ripe little plum” for a land speculator to purchase--then raise rents.

Resistance to Change

A major roadblock to putting together a deal, Chean said, has been a clump of tenants who are resistant to change.

“People in mobile home parks have got to realize that the world has shifted out from under their feet,” Chean said. “Residents in every mobile home park have this problem. The thing is, they need to wake up and recognize it.”

People like Wilburn, though, insist such dramatic steps would not be necessary if state or local lawmakers would approve legislation limiting rent increases at parks to coincide with the annual rise in inflation.

Villa Park residents like Joseph and Mary Nazarowski, agree, saying that rent controls are the only thing that will keep them financially afloat.

The couple, both 65, receive $650 in Social Security each month. To help out, they travel each week to the Long Beach Food Bank and pick up some canned goods. Joseph Nazarowski also tends a small garden, growing vegetables and fruit to help fill out their diet.

After 15 years in the park, they have seen their rent and utilities rise toward $300 a month. Now they’re worried about future rent increases.

“We’re insecure about this,” Nazarowski admitted. “We’re worried about where the money is going to come from. If it were to get worse, I don’t know just what we’d do.”