Your rights Bytes #15 - The Other FAQ, Part Three

· I got a call from an owner of a small mobilehome park who asked for advice on how to evict a very disruptive tenant.  The owner said that the tenant hadn’t paid rent since he moved in four months prior, and when the owner asked him for the rent money, the tenant laughed at him.  The park owner explained that the disruptive tenant had taken over the mobilehome when his father died, bringing with him drugs and unwelcomed guests.  The park owner noted that the recently deceased father had been a good tenant, but that his son was a nightmare.  I asked the park owner if the son was a registered tenant.  The owner said “no”; that the father had never registered his son.  The park owner was emotionally worn down, not only by the son’s behavior, but by the pressure of the other tenants for the owner to evict the son.  The owner, hoping I had some sort of legal leverage, said, “I don’t have the money to pay for an attorney.  What do I do?  Can you help?”  As I did in so many cases, I first told him that I was not an attorney and that I could not give legal advice.  I explained he law  – as I understood it – that since the son was not a registered tenant, and that he was never invited onto the property, then he was officially trespassing.  In this case the legal eviction process was not necessary.  I advised the owner to contact local law enforcement and have the son escorted off the owner’s property.  The owner was hopeful and understood this option but was now concerned about the empty mobilehome remaining in his park.  I explained that he would need to follow the official abandonment procedure, and if the son did not remove the mobilehome, then the owner could have the unit towed from his park.

· A man who had been living in his RV for many years, called me one day very mad that the park manager was making the tenants move their RVs out of the park every 30 days, and re-registering at the front gate.  He thought it was somehow discriminatory towards RVers that they had to move out every 30 days, just to line-up outside the park and drive back in and hope to get their favorite spaces back.  “The management makes us pack-up and drive our RVs out of the park every 30 days.  Is this legal?”  I asked the man what county he lived in, and when he told me he lived in one of California’s scenic coastal counties, well, that explained it.  I told him that all counties have their own laws on recreational vehicle living, and that most coastal counties are very strict on enforcement.  I had done some research a while back and learned that popular counties, like it or not, had some sort of ordinance restricting how long an RV could be parked in one spot.    So the 30-day in-and-out requirement was not an arbitrary park rule, but a county law.  I explained that even though some less-traveled counties might have similar laws, they may not be strictly enforced and that some long-term RVers in, say, Inyo County are not pressured to move out every 30-days.  The man wasn’t happy with my answer and maintained that it was “discrimination against RV residents.”  I cautiously explained to him that high-tourism counties have ordinances that try to keep RV park spaces available to all RVers, and that some RV parks might lose their status if they don’t make spaces available to visiting RVers. 

· On the subject of RV living, there are a few northern counties that advertise themselves as “recreational counties”. These are counties where outdoor activities are abundant.  Many private land owners have their own cabins, or camp for a short time on their land.  In these counties, non-permanent living structures are illegal.  In other words, it is illegal for the property owner to live on their own land in a temporary housing structure, such as an RV, car or tent.  And some counties won’t allow a mobilehome on private land unless it is situated in a registered mobilehome park.  One retired couple travelled to my office to ask me for help in getting the officials in their county to allow them to place a new RV on their own lot.  “We have owned this land for years, but now they are telling us we can’t live on it.  Are they allow to do that?”  There was an interesting back-story to this couple’s problem.  Their county had experienced a wild fire, wiping out hundreds of acres of forestland and destroying structures.  For decades prior to the fire, land-use ordinances had not been enforced.  But after the fire, the local officials started enforcing their ordinances.  This meant that this couple, and many others like them, could not replace the RVs or mobilehomes they had lost in the fire.  They argued that they should be “grandfathered-in” because they had been living on their land in an RV for years.  “Grandfathering” is not applicable here because the county’s ordinance had already been on the books, whether or not they had been enforced.  So in this case, the couple had to either build a permanent structure on their own land (acquiring all the permits to do so) or visit their land in their RV at restricted time intervals.

· An older man who lived in a mobilehome park in a quiet rural county, was told one day by the park manager that he had to take down his patio.  “I have lived in the same park for over 30 years.  After all these years I was told I have to take my patio down.  Is this fair?”  I asked him to describe his patio to me, thinking I could figure out from his description what the violation was.  He explained that he rented two spaces, side-by-side, and that he constructed a “patio”, connecting his two mobilehomes.  He said that since he was paying rent on both side-by-side spaces, that he was entitled to use the square footage between the spaces as well.  I told him that it sounded like his park got a visit from HCD and that his “patio” violated a very basic fire safety regulation.  I explained that a fire-fighting crew must be able to walk between mobilehomes and be able to haul their equipment with them.  I told him that he enjoyed his “patio” a lot longer than other residents in other parks would have, but that it was time for it to come down.  He thanked me for listening to him but decided that he would wait it out hoping that the park manager would not mention it again.

· A woman called me and wanted to know if I knew anything about the rumor that the mobilehome park where she lived was going to close down.  “We are all scared here.  If this park closes, we don’t know where we would go.  What should we do?”  I told her that I had no information on the status of her mobilehome park, but I did discuss with her why parks close down, and that she may want to watch for specific clues, if not outright ask the park owner.  When I asked her where her park was located, she explained that it was in Orange County near Disneyland (Clue #1), that her park was on a wide boulevard (Clue #2), that it was on the corner of a big, busy intersection (Clue #3), and that other parks near her had closed (Clue #4).  I explained how, generally, all mobilehome parks are on land zoned “temporary”, and that in very urbanized counties it was only a matter of time before temporary-use plots were destined to change and sold to developers (or to Walmart or Target).  She was very grateful for the time I spent discussing this with her over the phone, and that she was going to meet with her neighbors and tell them what she learned.  It didn’t solve her looming problem of displacement, but it was clearer to her why some mobilehome park owners sell their land, and what she needed to do to prepare.  Simply knowing why a mobilehome park would close down helped her tackle the next challenges.

--Stephanie Reid, formerly on staff with the Senate Select Committee on Manufactured Homes and Communities

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