By KRISTIN MAYER Special to the Daily Press
MID-CITY Behind a neatly groomed hedge on Colorado Avenue, nestled between a church and a café,Village Trailer Park rests in a precarious position, its fate increasingly uncertain.
Will high-rise condominiums soon jut into the sky, finally eliminating the vacant lots now overrun by weeds? Will vines continue to meander up the mobile home owners’ trellises undisturbed? Or will the residents’ anxious waiting continue without end?
Given Santa Monica’s considerable housing prices, a two-acre chunk of land on the city’s east side — between 26th Street and Bundy Drive — would seem a developer’s dream. That is, if someone can convince the steadfast, but weary, tenants to let their mobile homes deteriorate elsewhere.
The last thing most residents of Village Trailer Park, who are primarily elderly and frail, want to do is roll their 1950s-era trailers off their current nesting spots and onto the open road. But it’s a scenario each has had to confront. On three separate occasions within the last year, the residents peered into their mailboxes and were greeted with notices of closure.
While J&H Property Management has yet to file the development application necessary to change the current residential mobile home zoning, they did mail stacks of papers in large, official-looking packets to their tenants, offering a couple thousand dollars in relocation fees and counseling services in return for their departure.
Jeremy Kay, an outspoken park tenant who vows to be the last off the property, explained how intimidating and confusing the packets were for the park’s fragile population.
“The problem is the old folks keep reading it, and all they see is ‘eviction,’ and they go back and lock the door,” Kay said. “Most people would rather not think about this stuff because it’s unpleasant.”
The tenants, many of whom cringe at the thought of trying to decipher legal jargon, view the notices with a palpable anxiety.
June Griffin, president of the Village Trailer Park homeowner’s association, described her initial shock upon receiving her first notice.
“I was, like, ‘Oh, my God. What now?’ It was scary,” she said. “To most of us, it was out of the blue. We had had problems with the ownership for a number of years, but we never expected this.”
The Mobile Home Parks Act contains a provision that owners have a right to close their park. But in Santa Monica, the Rent Control Board requires an owner to apply for a permit before any closure can take place, according to Tracy Condon, public information officer for the city’s rent control agency.
Village Trailer Park has yet to file for the removal permit.
“The property owner and the attorneys for the residents have been in discussion,” said Alan Seltzer, the deputy city attorney who addressed the issue of the original closure notices. “Any time people talk, it’s a good thing. I see it as a positive development, but it’s still all preliminary.”
Seltzer has written two letters informing residents that the notices distributed to them didn’t comply with state law.
“There’s a disagreement between the city and the park owner over the proper procedures to close the park,” Seltzer said. “As a result of those disagreements, there have been discussions that extended the closure date two times.”
The first round of notices listed July 2007 as the date for residents to make themselves scarce. The management subsequently pushed the date back to Oct. 31, and then to its present Jan. 31, 2008. The delay could allow park management to formally identify how it will use the expansive property.
A bust of Abraham Lincoln greets passersby at one end of Village Trailer Park. Cacti and red potted geraniums separate the faded Streamlines and Fleetwoods from one another. Lampposts poke out of bushes along Colorado Avenue.
A jasmine bush by Kay’s trailer has grown into a full-fledged tree, bringing back memories of a time before 2000, when parking spaces displaced many of the park’s rare trees.
Neighbors who soak up the sunshine from the comfort of their lawn chairs grumble about a park management system that seems determined to boot them all out. “(A former on-site manager) told me his goal was to make it as miserable as possible for the residents,” said Tom Baxter, a retired costume designer who lives next to Kay. “It’s really an unbelievable abuse of people.”
An August 1999 inspection by the city’s Building and Safety Department — in response to resident complaints — found 18 health and safety code violations for plumbing, electrical wiring and other problems. The park managers spent roughly $1 million in repairs.
The following year, 45 tenants won a failure to maintain lawsuit.
Later, a dozen residents won a case against park management, who had failed to tell them about rent control prices when they moved in.
“The population has been thinning out, unfortunately, because the management has been threatening us with closure,” Kay said, noting that the park’s last 50-year occupant passed away this spring.
Of Village Trailer Park’s remaining 99 residents, 38 are over 60 years of age and 32 are physically disabled or chronically ill, according to Griffin. The park presently has 75 units, 22 vacant spots and 13 empty trailers.
Baxter said that very few people have actually moved away, yet residents with waning enthusiasm realize it might be easier to just leave than stay and fight.
“When somebody dies or moves away, they move the trailer out,” Kay said.“The big objective is just to clear the place.”
Kay continues to mourn the suicide of his neighbor John Stiles last fall.
“Unfortunately, many of them are just eating their guns,” Kay said. “My neighbor blew his brains out. It just makes me very sad.”
Griffin had tried to calm Stiles down during a lengthy conversation the night before the latter took his life, when he expressed his distress over the park’s imminent closure.
“He just really was unable to cope with it, as are a lot of the tenants,” Griffin said. “It’s hard to do because, at this time of life, things aren’t supposed to be in an uproar.”
Griffin said Stiles had no place to go and even contemplated living on the beach. He had lost his wife prior to moving into the trailer park. She described his former neighbor as a delightful man whose enormous capacity for empathy made him hurt for his neighbors who had to live in anxiety.
Ten years ago, Griffin moved in to Village Trailer Park hoping to spend her last years in a unit where she could maintain a certain level of financial and physical independence despite her heart problems, bone disease and reliance on a wheelchair.
There is no backup plan if the park actually closes. Griffin’s only family is a son in the military. Like Stiles, many residents have no alternative to their lives at Village Trailer Park.
While the park is offering between $4,500 and $7,200 for relocation costs, Griffin said the sum would not cover the expenses of tearing down, moving and reskirting her mobile home.
Tim McCormick, a city building officer, said it was unclear where the residents would
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 12, 2007. Read the original PDF.