Mobile Home Owner News – July 2023
Resident curated mobile home owners news and information for residents of Mobile Home Parks owned by Kort & Scott (KS) companies. The MHPHOA also provides news coverage for Mobile Home Parks not owned by KS companies.
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RE: Fullerton, California / Rancho Fullerton Mobile Home Park / Nicholas Family Trust
Mon, Jul 24, 2023 – Attorney Gregory Beam of Gregory Beam & Associates sent park homeowners Sam and Wha Kim a bill for over $12,000 (twelve thousand) related to work he says he did in preparing materials to sue the elderly couple on behalf of Rancho Fullerton Mobilehome Estates located on Valencia in Fullerton. In addition, the couple also received a 60-Day Notice to Terminate. The couple are weighing their options though the threatening letter asks the court for an additional $1,300 if they attempt to fight to stay.
The couple, who have never missed a monthly payment on their space, are well-liked by neighbors, and Mr. Kim serves as the community’s HOA vice president. They live on their combined Social Security retirement income and are now in a very difficult situation with 60 days to sell their mobile home and move, plus a $12,000 bill. Added to this is the problem that mobile homes are notoriously non-mobile and very expensive to move, presuming there was anywhere to move them. If the couple were to find a buyer on such short notice, the new homeowner would have to be pre-approved by the park management, who could say no – which would force the couple to sell directly to the park at a very low price.
The 20-page bill from Attorney Beam, dated July 14, 2023, comes a week after the couple received the 60-day notice and a month after Judge Corey Cramin granted an injunction demanding construction materials on the property be removed. It is apparent that the Kim’s time-stamped photos showing that those things had already been done were not seen by the Judge, who appears to have made his decision based on Attorney Beam’s submitted photos taken during the park-approved construction of an enclosed porch to their home.
RE: Fullerton, California / Rancho Fullerton Mobile Home Park / Nicholas Family Trust
Sat, Jul 15, 2023 – There has been nothing but trouble for a local elderly couple since they retired and bought a mobile home at Rancho Fullerton Mobile Home Park in May 2022, signing an over 36-page lease for the space in English (though their first language is Korean). The couple have been good citizens, have always paid their space rent on time, and have made friends at the park where Mr. Kim serves as the Vice President of the Homeowners Association.
In June 2022, Mr. Kim, wanting to give his wife a lovely enclosed sunroom, applied for a building permit that the park manager also signed. Due to a fixed income and because he had extensive construction experience, Mr. Kim, even at age 78, set upon building it himself. He set up his tools and brought in the necessary construction materials. Two months into the project, park manager Andrea West was frequently heard shouting that Mr. Kim was in violation as she took pictures of the construction site.
Feeling rushed to get the job done and stop the harassment, Mr. Kim accidentally severed a finger which caused the completion of the addition to be delayed. But, not even a doctor’s note prohibiting Mr. Kim from continuing the project for several months in order for him to heal paused the harassment of the elderly couple, who received a 7-day Notice of Violation in early September from Park attorney Gregory Beam. The notice demanded the construction materials stored on the side of the property be removed immediately. A second 7-day Notice sent two months later specified that all construction materials be removed and that construction details be completed within the seven days.
Multiple park residents, contacted by the Observer, speculated that the park management and a local realtor have conspired to force homeowners to sell their mobile homes to the park at low prices. For example, Kathy Borowich, the previous lessee of the space where Kim currently leases, stated that management had tried to evict her and had relentlessly harassed her in hopes that she would sell her mobile home to them. Borowich instead went to court, winning her wrongful eviction and harassment case against the park in October 2021. She subsequently moved out and sold the home to the Kims and said Park Manager Ms. West was unhappy.
Rancho Fullerton Mobile Home Park is owned by the Nicholas Family Trust, whose beneficiary is Susan (James) Denton.
RE: Fullerton, California / Rancho Fullerton Mobile Home Park / Nicholas Family Trust
Mon, Jun 26, 2023 – Rancho Fullerton Mobile Home Park, owned by the Nicholas Family, has sued an elderly couple. The senior couple, the Kims, will have to pay the lawyer fees and also have been threatened with eviction. So how did this happen, and what could have been done differently?
The Kims moved to Fullerton on May 26, 2022, to escape the Texas heat. They retired to the 55+ community of Rancho Fullerton (no, not the infamous Rancho La Paz with its predatory owner John Saunders – this is a different senior mobile home park on the southwest side of town). The Kims purchased their mobile home and never failed to pay the park’s $950 monthly space rent. The couple are American citizens, but their first language is Korean.
Mr. Kim applied on June 7, 2022, for a building permit to expand his home’s California Room (also known as an enclosed porch) and add stairs front and back. He obtained the permit from the Department of Housing and Community Development (the State agency that oversees mobile home regulations). Rancho Fullerton park operator Andrea West signed the application on June 9, 2022. The permit showed an expiration date of December 6, 2022. It was a big project, but having the required skills, Mr. Kim, at 76 years old and living on a fixed income, proceeded with the construction plans, cutting costs by doing the work himself. As you can imagine, progress was slow, but he was meeting his inspection deadlines.
As with all construction projects, equipment, supplies, and demolition debris waiting to be removed were stored in the yard. Unfortunately, the park operator apparently expected that the construction would be faster and less messy and, in September 2022, enlisted the park’s lawyer to send the Kims notification that they had seven days to clear the yard of all the construction debris, including saw horses, plywood, wooden beams, shingles, paint, building supplies, etc.
RE: Sacramento, California / Capital Mobile Estates LLC / Hochman, Salkin, Toscher, Perez, PC
Fri, Jul 21, 2023 – Carol Eckstrom dragged out a chair and staged a sit-in, just a few months after her stroke. In a way, she got what she asked for: The manager of her Sacramento mobile home park had finally hired contractors to fix the bulge in her walkway. But it would cost her $500.
Eckstrom flatly disagreed that she should automatically have to pay $500 to her landlord to have the walkway fixed. She wanted time to find her own contractor. If sitting right on top of that trip hazard all day would stop the work from happening, that’s what she would do.
Eckstrom is 73, a retired accountant with a tidy white bob. A complaint form she copied and saved shows that she first told the park management office about the roots pushing up the walkway in front of her Capital Mobile Estates home on Sept. 2, 2022. For the nine months before her small act of protest, management took no action. After reporting the problem again April 2, with another written form, she said she got fed up and called the California Department of Housing and Community Development the next month.
On the Friday before Memorial Day, Eckstrom learned that the workers would come to address the problem the next day – and she would have to foot the bill.
The job didn’t seem like a $500 job to Eckstrom, and anyway, she thought she had the right to more time to negotiate with the landlord and to seek other bids. She said she told the park manager as much, but the manager, Lydia Mitchell, refused to delay the work, showing up that Saturday afternoon with contractors. There, they found Eckstrom and several friends sitting on top of the worksite in the wooden kitchen chairs she had wheeled outside on her walker early that morning.
Then, Eckstrom said, Mitchell summoned Sacramento police officers to the scene and threatened to evict her. Eckstrom was so scared and overwhelmed that she started to cry.
Terrified that she would be evicted, Eckstrom agreed to pay the money and slowly shuffled inside. Soon after, she obtained the services of an attorney for the Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League, who took over communications about the $500 and asserted that his client would not and should not pay that money.
RE: Petaluma, California / Predator Harmony Communities / Three Pillar Communities
Wed, Jul 19, 2023 – Attempts by city leaders to bring Petaluma’s mobile home tenant protections in line with other Sonoma County cities has led to an extreme side effect, as two of the city’s largest mobile home parks are now threatening to shut down completely, potentially resulting in hundreds of local residents without homes.
Owners of both Little Woods Mobile Villa, a 78-unit all-ages mobile home park at 1821 Lakeville Hwy., and Youngstown, a 102-unit all-seniors mobile home park at 911 N. McDowell Blvd., have notified residents of their potential plans to close the parks and convert them to other uses.
Little Woods Mobile Villa is managed by Harmony Communities and owned by Little Woods Mobile Villa LLC, which according to state business records lists Nick Ubaldi as the LLC’s agent as of December 2022. The principal address for the owner is listed as Harmony Communities’ Stockton address.
Meanwhile, residents of Youngstown received a similar letter dated July 7 from WGP Property Management that announced the owners were also considering closing the park, and had retained a firm to assist in the process.
Both notices of potential closure came after the city vowed to update its cap on annual rent increases for mobile home parks. Council members already have approved amendments to the city’s Mobile Home Park Space Rent Stabilization program, which was originally established in 1993 and capped annual rent increases at 6% or 100% of the Consumer Price Index, whichever was lower – but which now caps annual rent increases 4% or 70% of the CPI, whichever is lower.
RE: Carson, California / Imperial Avalon Mobile Estates
Sat, Jul 15, 2023 – Elderly Filipino residents in Carson City, California are fighting to keep their homes and their communities intact from rapid development.
In recent years, several mobile homes in Carson and in nearby cities have been sold off by their owners, plowed down, and turned into high-rise luxury apartments.
This has left residents, many of them elderly and with disabilities, without access to affordable housing.
The Carson City Council has passed an ordinance to protect residents from unfair mobile home evictions and regulate the process of sales of mobile home parks.
The city is also in the process of creating districts that would create overlay zones where only mobile parks would be allowed.
RE: Predator Harmony Communities / Resident Owned Communities
Mon, Jul 10, 2023 – Amid an affordable housing crisis, some states are looking to help low-income residents stay in their homes by helping them purchase the land their manufactured housing sits on.
In 2021, a California-based investor group purchased Golden Hill Mobile Home Park in Golden, Colorado, a small city just outside Denver in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Less than two years later, rents doubled for the nearly 40 households that called the community home, pushing residents – some that had lived there for decades – to seek cheaper alternatives in an area already feeling the pressure of an affordable housing crisis.
But this week, residents of the Golden Hills community got some good news: They are now the owners of the land their homes sit on, thanks in part to a 2020 state law that gave them the opportunity to purchase the property with financial assistance from the city and nonprofits.
Manufactured housing communities like the one in Golden are considered some of the most affordable unsubsidized housing in the country. But between rising rents and deep-pocketed investors scooping up these communities, residents are increasingly looking to purchase the land itself, and governments at all levels are mobilizing to help them do so.