Mobile home parks again on the council's agenda

It's like a scene from John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" as the elderly, disabled and working poor in Thousand Oaks gather together in misery to worry about what's going to happen to them and their families as those in charge prepare to decide their fate.

On Tues., Dec. 18, the Thousand Oaks City Council will decide through zoning the fate of about 1,000 mobile home owners. The residents will see if Mayor Andy Fox and councilmembers Claudia Bill-de la Peña and Dennis Gillette will keep their campaign promises to take care of them.

City staff is expected to make recommendations in support of what the planning commission decided Oct. 22. The commission unanimously recommended that two mobile home park areas should be designated for residential use, if zone changes and General Plan amendments are made for the sites. Highdensity housing with lowincome condominiums could someday replace the mobile homes.

During public comments at previous City Council meetings, residents of the mobile home parks have expressed concern over where they're going to live if the mobile home parks are closed. Many live in the parks because of the low cost and insist they couldn't afford to relocate anywhere else in the city.

Seniors who've lived, worked and raised their children in Thousand Oaks have sold their family homes and purchased mobile homes. They thought they had a good plan and expected to live out their lives in T.O.

None of them expected to become disposable to the city they love, said Roberto Martinez of Conejo Mobile Home Park.

"It's so very sad what is happening to the seniors. Their little houses are all they have, and they don't know what's going to happen to them," Martinez said.

Mobile home owners rent space from the park owners.

The homes aren't actually mobile and if moved, they are easily destroyed and of no value, Martinez said.

Conejo Mobile Home Park at 1200 Newbury Road and Elms Plaza Mobile Home Park at 1262 Newbury Road are currently designated for commercial use.

Feb. 1 will mark the expiration of a moratorium that bans closing, subdividing or converting the parks for some other use. The City Council put the moratorium in place last year when owners of the Conejo Mobile Home Park announced they were considering converting the site into an assisted living facility for seniors.

Martinez, 34, and his wife, Sarah, 27, have lived in Thousand Oaks for about 15 years. He's a carpenter and she's a medical assistant. They have two sons, one 6 years old, the other 3 months.

When they married about seven years ago, the couple rented a room, but when they were expecting their first child, they moved into an apartment, paying $900 a month the first year. Each year the rent went up $100 per month. After three years they were paying $1,200 a month and decided they wanted to put that money toward ownership.

Not able to afford a traditional home, they purchased a mobile home for about $60,000, Roberto Martinez said.

"It needed a lot of work, but as a carpenter I was able to fix it up and now it's in good shape," he said.

Now, if they're forced out of the mobile home park so the city can meet the state's requirement for low-income housing, he and his family may lose their entire investment. They have no place to go.

"We want to raise our children here in this safe city with good schools," Martinez said.

Two other mobile home parks in Thousand Oaks, Crestview Trailer Park at 53 N. Conejo School Road and the Twin Palms Mobile Home Park at 198 N. Skyline Drive, are also in areas designated commercial or industrial.

They, too, could have been designated for residential use at the October planning commission meeting, but the area these parks are in could be affected by the Thousand Oaks Boulevard Specific Plan and the zoning requirements that go along with that plan.

Alhough it's still designated as a draft, making it unavailable to the public through the Freedom of Information Act, city officials seem to be using its contents to make future plans that affect the city today. For instance, holding off on the zoning of the two mobile home parks would allow the parks to eventually be rezoned as mixed-use. This would make the zoning compatible with the specific plan draft for Thousand Oaks Boulevard.