Letter shows city had a different perspective on mobile homes in 1995
By Nancy Needham nancy@theacorn.com

Conejo Mobile Home Park residents wish they'd received a letter of encouragement from Councilmember Andy Fox like the one he sent to Thunderbird Oaks Mobile Home Park in 1995.

The letter touts mobile home parks as an asset and an affordable housing resource protected by the city. His written words claimed that any resident displaced from their homes would be adequately compensated.

"This means that it would cost a developer an average of $20,000 on top of the market value of homes to move residents out. Any new development would simply be uneconomical," stated the letter written on city letterhead on Sept. 28, 1995.

"I have no idea where that came from. I'm not sure what they were thinking at the time," said City Attorney Amy Albano.

"They" being Fox and a city staff member.

It's common practice that council members work with staff when writing such a letter, and Fox told her that he did so with this letter, Albano said.

Fox didn't immediately respond to this reporter's attempts to reach him.

The letter also addressed the role mobile home parks play in the city's General Plan.

"All mobile home parks are considered to be an asset by the council and are officially recognized as such by our General Plan. Mobile home parks are a senior housing and affordable resource and are protected by the housing element of the General Plan," the letter stated.

Fox, City Manager Scott Mitnick and other city officials met with Conejo Mobile Home Park residents in January 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.

"While mobile homes may represent less expensive housing for some residents in comparison to what it would cost to own or rent a single-family home, condominium and/or apartment unit, mobile homes are not legally considered permanent affordable housing," Mitnick wrote in a city report that month.

Confusion about what is and what isn't considered affordable continues. It might seem easy to assume affordable housing would include the least expensive, but, according to Mitnick, the state doesn't officially recognize mobile homes as affordable housing. So when cities must provide affordable housing numbers to the state, they can't count mobile homes.

"This is why we went to City Council," said former Planning Commissioner Janet Wall earlier this week. "Mobile home parks should be protected by the housing element of the General Plan, and that's what we're hoping to do."

The General Plan is a longrange guide developed in the 1970s for the physical development of the city that set environmental, social and land use goals for future development. Housing is one of the elements for which the General Plan provides detailed policies and standards.

Wall and members of Thousand Oaks Mobile Home Owners Association Action Committee can be found sitting outside local supermarkets and canvassing neighborhoods trying to collect 10,000 signatures by May 16. They hope to get an initiative on the November ballot that will protect mobile home parks in Thousand Oaks.

The initiative would require mobile home park owners closing the parks to be required to pay fair market value for the mobile homes and would create a mobile home park exclusive land use designation.

Thousand Oaks mobile home owner Brenda Mohr Feldman is hoping others who live in the city will join with the mobile home owners to protect affordable housing for low-income residents who work in Thousand Oaks and retired seniors on fixed incomes.

Even if the state doesn't count them as such, "Mobile home parks are the most affordable housing we have in Thousand Oaks," Wall said.

In January, the City Council voted in favor of high-density General Plan designation so the owner of the Conejo Mobile Home Park could turn the area into condominiums.

A two-year process to close the park began recently when an application to do so was accepted by the city.

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