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# Village Trailer Park residents face eviction as Mid-City park prepares to close
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/061207-story/
- Published: 2007-06-12T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:15:04.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Real Estate & Housing, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Christine Chang GOING MOBILE: The Village Trailer Park in Mid-City — which occupies a two-acre expanse between 26th Street and Bundy Drive — has proven an uneasy dwelling for many of its residents, who fear they will soon be evicted to make room for condominiums.* wind up if the park closed for good.

“There will be a place for them to go, but it wouldn’t be in Santa Monica,”McCormick said.

The city is renovating another trailer park in town, but it will take a couple years to finish the project, McCormick said.

“These old people just don’t understand,” Kay said, admitting that his alternative to living at Village Trailer Park is a Ralph’s shopping cart. “They came here and felt this was where they were going to have a pleasant lifespan until the end.”

“The park is going to be closed. We have no vacancies,” said June Willis, an assistant manager who started working at Village Trailer Park earlier this year.

Willis was unsure of the exact closure timeline, but knew that upper management at J&H Property was talking about the beginning of next year as a target date. Willis said that all the tenants received notices informing them of the decision.

With closure looming, residents contend the management is hesitant to let them buy or sell their trailers.

“I’ve had this (trailer) sold three times, and each time the manager said ‘no,’” Baxter said. “I’ve been a prisoner for 10 years.”

Baxter estimated that he could sell his trailer for $150,000\. He had planned on using that money to buy a house, but now feels “hopeless.”

Tenants contend they are not allowed to upgrade their trailers while on park property.

“It would hardly seem logical,” Willis said. “Why would they want to do that? We’re leaving.”

In 2000, rumors had already begun spreading that the park would be sold to developers. Fears subsided when the city noted that the land was zoned for trailers.

Park management offered to sell the property to the city shortly after it completed repairs from a series of code violations in 1999, but the city declined, McCormick said. “One of the reasons they want to go out of business as a mobile home park is so they can build something else there,” McCormick said. “They’ve expressed that from the very first interaction we had with them several years ago.”

James Joffe directs the mobile home division of J&H Property Management, the off-site managers upon which the tenants pin their frustration. J&H began managing the 109-lot park in May of 1990\. Joffe declined to comment on plans for redeveloping the trailer park site.

“We’re not even a part of that,” Joffe said. “We’re just here to manage the property.”

Kay suspects the owners would build a high-rise condominium complex if allowed and doesn’t look forward to the added volume of people the development would add to the neighborhood.

Rush-hour traffic already congests Colorado Avenue, Kay said, with large office buildings for MTV Networks, Sony Music, Microsoft, Universal Music Group and Yahoo just around the corner.

“The traffic is bumper-to-bumper already,” Kay said. “And to put a high-rise in — that would put 500 more cars in the street at that time. I used to be able to look down the street and see the ocean. Now, we just see cars.”

Village Trailer Park was originally built as a camp for vacationers and weekend beach visitors in the 1950s. The property started out as completely rent controlled, but the numbers are dwindling.

Between 1986 and 2006, more than 2,200 units in Santa Monica went off city rent rolls as low income, according to Griffin. Only 480 of those were re-rented, meaning a loss of at least 1,733 low-income units.

For a rent-controlled property to redevelop, the project that replaces it must allocate at least 15 percent of its new housing options to low-income applicants.

Thanks to rent control, tenants at the park only pay between $250 and $500 per month for the ground their coaches sit on, according to Condon.

“It is probably some of the most affordable housing in the city because tenants are just renting spaces,” Condon said.

In the past, the city changed the zoning on the land from trailer to mobile home with the intent of ensuring that it be used for affordable housing, McCormick said.

“Steps were taken to protect the park, it would be a high hill to climb,” McCormick said, explaining his doubts regarding a zoning change. “Obviously, we’re concerned for the safety of the park, and the city overall is concerned with maintaining affordable housing, which that park provides.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 12, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/061207.pdf?ref=smdp.com)