Petition drive begins for mobile home owners
By Nancy Needham nancy@theacorn.com

NANCY NEEDHAM/Acorn Newspapers 'DON'T MAKE US MOVE'- Thunderbird Oaks Mobile Home Park residents Joni and Lee Agnew ask registered voters to sign a petition that could help them continue living in Thousand Oaks. They want voters to decide if the city should be allowed to rezone mobile home parks so developers can build condominiums. Mobile home residents hope to collect at least 10,000 signatures by the end of May in order to get the initiative placed on the November ballot.

A group that no longer trusts city officials to protect them is hoping that caring residents of Thousand Oaks will come to their aid and help them fight to keep their homes from developers.

Thousand Oaks Mobile Home Owners Association Action Committee members are sitting outside local supermarkets and canvassing neighborhoods trying to collect 10,000 signatures in the next few weeks. They hope to get an initiative on the November ballot that will protect mobile home parks in Thousand Oaks from being turned into condominiums, according to Brenda Mohr Feldman, president of TOMHOAAC.

There is no way to stop mobile home park owners from selling their parks, but the initiative would require them to pay fair market value for the mobile homes when closing a park, she said. The measure would also create a mobile home park exclusive land use designation.

"An exclusive mobile home park land use designation would not permit the city to rezone to high-density residential like the city has already done to one mobile home park," Feldman said.

A Thousand Oaks resident and mobile home park owner, Feldman is hoping others who live in the city will join with the mobile home owners to protect what she described as affordable housing for low-income residents who work in Thousand Oaks as well as retired seniors on fixed incomes.

"Many of the people who need us to take care of them are not able to do so for themselves. They are seniors or disabled people who can't sit out in front of a supermarket for hours to gather signatures," Feldman said.

She's seeking volunteers in the community who will help collect the signatures, she said.

Penny Mayou, co-president of Conejo Mobile Home Park Homeowners Association, is disabled and said she fears losing her home when the mobile home park she now lives in closes.

On a cold and rainy night in January, the City Council rejected Conejo Mobile Home Park residents' pleas and voted 31 in favor of high-density General Plan designation so the owner of the mobile home park could turn the area into condominiums.

Councilmember Claudia Billde la Peña voted against the rezoning. Councilmember Andy Fox, the council's designated mediator between park residents and the park owner, Joseph Bednar, was absent.

Previous to the council meeting, city officials met with Conejo Mobile Home Park residents and told them the city couldn't stop the park from closing, wouldn't give or lend them money to purchase the property, couldn't find a place in Thousand Oaks where they could relocate their mobile homes, and that they wouldn't be getting inplace fair market values for their homes.

The city said it would try to work with individual residents to help them from becoming homeless and having to sleep on the streets or in the open space of Thousand Oaks.

"These people are those with low incomes- some are World War II and Vietnam veterans. Many are seniors and disabled and they really do need our support and our protection," former Planning Commissioner Janet Wall said.

The goal of the initiative, Wall said, is for the closure of a park to proceed in an acceptable, honorable way over time so that those who live in the park wouldn't be affected.

"There is nothing wrong with being a developer or a landowner, but it's not okay to take the home of someone who has lived there for 30 years and has nowhere else to go," she said.

With the closing of Conejo Mobile Home Park, residents in other mobile home parks in the city who thought they were safe are now living in fear, Walt Marlette, 63, said.

"I want to be sure I've got a home to live in. If they can take down one mobile home park, they can do it to the rest of us. That's why I'm here helping with the petition," Marlette said.

Those wanting to volunteer to help collect petition signatures can call Feldman at (805) 480-3433.