> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # SM City Hall: Savior or slumlord? - URL: https://www.smdp.com/sm-city-hall-savior-or-slumlord/ - Published: 2001-12-20T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T22:32:47.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import *City ownership of trailer park still an issue at lawsuit’s end* *By DAVE DANFORTH Daily Press Staff Writer* Residents at one of Santa Monica’s last trailer parks are feeling squeezed by City Hall, which some suggest is nothing but a slum landlord. By one account, the city has saved Mountain View Mobile Inn from ravenous developers. It has been preserved as a temple to housing for its residents — and the 90 mobile homes they live in. To believe another, the same 5-acre trailer park on Stewart Street is a slum, representing a botched opportunity to lift from squalor some residents living three-to-a-living room, and run by a City Hall that should condemn it. There is one problem: City Hall already owns it. And this same City Hall is either a visionary savior or a one-eyed Jack which realizes it is nursing a failure but is loathe to admit it. Mountain View is an almost quaint sight, with its small coaches and snaking roads. It isn’t typical Santa Monica housing, but it’s a chance for residents to own their own piece of the rock. Residents own or rent their coaches, but pay rent to City Hall for the plots on which they sit. Its rich, 50-year history includes three lawsuits, an alleged methane gas mess next door, and all sorts of dark allegations — from a resident conspiracy against its own lawyers to the exact nature of a proposed $2 million payment which some called a “kickback” (see related story). The city came to own Mountain View last year, when it settled a toxic waste lawsuit. Its goal was lofty: to apply Santa Monica affordable housing legislation to save it. But the goal the city espoused a year ago — the maintenance of 141 affordable housing units — is now deemed unattainable by the same city which championed it just last year. It says affordable or not, 141 is just too tight a squeeze. For residents, even with the relief of city ownership, it’s decision time. They can either proceed with a city-subsidized, $7 million conversion to a park they would own themselves. Or they can revert to a recently-ended experiment: Choosing a non-profit corporation to operate it, freeing the homeowners from the headaches of collecting each other’s rents. Last year, the city rejected a plan to replace the 90 often-rickety now-occupied mobile homes with new condominiums at the same rents. The city essentially said that would be making a deal with the devil: It would allow 51 additional free market units to be built to subsidize the low rents. The city council said it wanted to protect all 141 units as affordable, and found the price, including a $2 million “development fee” for attorneys, too rich. Now the city is in a peculiar quandary. It has found that there’s not enough space in the park to keep all 141 units, and also squeeze in wider streets, assigned parking, modern electric and sewer service, and natural gas lines to replace propane tanks. Yet, said city housing and redevelopment director Bob Moncrief, if the rent control board doesn’t approve the reduction, “we have a problem.” Attorney and longtime affordable housing advocate Paul DeSantis isn’t swallowing a word of City Hall’s line that it may not be able to keep all 141 units (some are now unoccupied). “You mean to say they were negotiating to buy this park for $7 million for several years and didn’t know what was there?” he asked. > “You mean to say they were negotiating to buy this park for $7 million for several years and didn’t know what was there?” — — PAUL DeSANTIS Attorney The ‘grand plan’ has holes DeSantis, who represented resident-tenants involved in a three-way lawsuit with the city and former park owner Ring Trading, proposed the 51 extra “luxury units.” He calls the city’s stewardship “a scandal,” and said city officials would be all over the park for its substandard condition if someone other than the city was the landlord. Phyllis Goff, who heads the homeowners association, doesn't entirely agree. “We’re fighting to preserve our mobile homes, whichever way it can be done. We’ve saved this place as a mobile home park.” > “We’re fighting to preserve our mobile homes, whichever way it can be done. We’ve saved this place as a mobile home park.” — — PHYLLIS GOFF Homeowners’ association president A 1992 Santa Monica law would seem the perfect way to allow residents to own the park themselves. The statute is known as “TORCA” — Tenant Ownership Rights Charter Amendment. The city envisioned Mountain View as an ideal TORCA case, and committed $4 million in 1992 from funds collected from condominium conversions throughout the city. The plan called for the city to buy the park and then sell it back to an association owned by the tenants. At its heart was a loan with remarkable terms. According to Moncrief, the tenants would collect space rents and pay their expenses. If there was money left over, the tenants would give it to the city. If there was nothing left, the city would be forgiving. “If affordabili-ty dictates it, we wouldn’t get a penny,” Moncrief said, adding that the goal was to preserve space rents as they are now: About $300 per space, depending on size, and whether each included its own coach. But if the tenants couldn’t cover their expenses, they’d have to raise their own rents. And Goff points to the pitfall of demographics. Over the years, large families have moved in, and fewer coaches are occupied by their owners. She can imagine rent as a problem for some tenants, with others forced to act as collection agents against their neighbors. What now? The residents association has been leaning towards inviting a non-profit group to run the park and manage it, as the city has already done. It picked an Orange County-based group, Jamboree, to operate Mountain View. But the city’s Moncrief and Jamboree recently agreed to discontinue their deal, largely because Jamboree isn't local enough to stay on top of the park’s maintenance. DeSantis worries that it would take a calamity like a propane tank exploding to spur the city to action. Although much has changed over the past decade in court papers and ownership, there is little visible to show for it. Yet to some, like Goff, the status quo is a welcome relief compared to the specter of ownership by a developer. The TORCA law has now expired, though the Mountain View application, filed in 1996, still could go through. Discussions are moving, by all accounts, very slowly. The city council, rent control board, and planning commissioners must finally weigh in. Some see sufficient victory in a benevolent city takeover. Others worry that political winds may change, bringing a less sympathetic city leadership to power. Still others see nothing benevolent at all at Mountain View. DeSantis, who presented the condominium plan, sees failure. “They could have had attractive housing there, with 90 affordable units, at the same price the mobile units would cost,” he said. “Now they have a run-down trailer park instead.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/122001-02_01.jpg) Phyllis Goff, a longtime resident of Mountain View Mobile Inn, is up in arms about the decades-old problems that plague the park, which the city owns and maintains. (Photo: Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/122001-02_02.jpg) This trailer is one of 90 in the Mountain View Mobile Inn that provides affordable housing in Santa Monica. (Photo: Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 20, 2001.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/122001.pdf?ref=smdp.com)