Tatum and Kaplan

The following are excerpts from various news articles regarding Thomas Tatum and Jeffrey Kaplan. They are several years old but still IMHO have a familiar ring to them. More to follow.

Article from The Los Angeles Time, February 16, 1996 The Maverick at Center of Mobile Home Rent Battle

Resting in the dairy farm country of northwestern Riverside County, the Swan Lake mobile home park once was a quiet refuge for many low- and middle-income retirees.

That tranquility, however, was shattered after a partnership half-owned by Jeffrey A. Kaplan, a Los Angeles lawyer turned real estate maverick, took over Swan Lake in the late 1980s.

The new landlords soon demanded bigger annual rent increases. They pushed so hard, in fact, that Riverside County officials authorized construction of a new mobile home park at public expense largely to provide a sanctuary for financially squeezed Swan Lake residents. To the residents' dismay, the county project later was scuttled--when Kaplan's firm filed a lawsuit that threatened to hold up work for years.

Such tactics have made Kaplan, who owns interest in about 15 mobile home parks, a symbol of greed to many of his opponents and one of the most controversial park landlords in California. But now Kaplan, 49, is antagonizing even more of the state's 1 million mobile home park dwellers..................

Some park owners have learned the art of defusing tensions by dealing diplomatically with tenants and charging moderate rent increases. But by all accounts, Kaplan--short, wiry and engaging yet hot-tempered--has never taken that tack.

Kaplan is disliked even by some park landlords who support Prop. 199; they privately blame Kaplan's tactics for inspiring many communities to adopt profit-shrinking rent-control ordinances in the first place.

"In this industry, there's room to gouge," said a Prop. 199 supporter who asked not to be identified. "People can't take their house and walk away. Jeff pushed the limit in his parks, more than most of us think is right."

The resulting animosity has fostered still-pending private lawsuits accusing Kaplan and Tatum partnerships of misleading customers into signing exorbitant land leases, allowing their parks to deteriorate into near-slums and threatening to evict residents who protested.

Moreover, the Santa Clara County district attorney's office in December filed a complaint accusing two Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group partnerships in San Jose of duping customers--many of them unsophisticated in real estate matter--into signing high-rent, long-term leases that violated the city' rent control law. An untold number of residents, the complaint alleges, have been forced to abandon their homes or sell them at distressed prices......

Meanwhile, abandoned homes are spreading throughout Swan Lake--the result, Griffiths says, of foreclosures stemming from the escalating rents.

But why would Tatum-Kaplan want to drive out residents? One possibility is raised in the Santa Clara County district attorney's complaint against the Tatum-Kaplan partnerships and related defendants in San Jose.

The complaint charges without specifying details, that the Tatum-Kaplan partnerships "are purchasing mobile homes abandoned by resident who cannot afford the rent and reselling them for a profit. By raising rents to a point where tenants abandon their homes, (the Tatum-Kaplan partnerships) are not only increasing the residents' injuries. . . but are also reaping additional profit for themselves."

Article from the San Jose Mercury News, March 23, 1996

MOBILE HOME RENT CONTROL BATTLE STATE MEASURE IS TARGET OF GRASS-ROOTS EFFORT

Why didn't the mobile home owners understand what they were signing?

''These leases are about 30 pages thick. Home buyers were told they couldn't take one outside to review it,'' said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Ken Rosenblatt, who is prosecuting Kaplan and Tatum and their firms for alleged rent-gouging and operating an elaborate scheme to circumvent San Jose's rent control.

The leases called for rent hikes of 8 percent or 9 percent a year for five years, with an additional 10 percent tacked on in th fifth year for a total of 18 percent or 19 percent that year. The fact that they were for 25 years was buried deep in the document, Rosenblatt said.

Article from the San Jose Mercury News, January 8, 2000
LAWSUIT CLAIMS RENT GOUGING CASE BEGINS: MOBILE-HOME PARK OWNEERS ACCUSED OF SKIRTING RENT CONTROL LAWS IN LONG RUNNING DISPUTE

After a five-year delay, prosecutors went to trial in civil court this week accusing the owners of two mobile-home parks of rent-gouging and running an intricate sham to skirt San Jose's rent control ordinance. .....prosecutors claim that the defendants, Beaumont Investments Ltd. and San Jose Investments Ltd., engaged in unfair business practices in a six-year scheme to circumvent the ordinance, which regulates how much mobile-home park owners can increase the rent on leases of one year or less. The companies are joint owners of Lamplighter and Casa del Lago mobile home parks, which are managed by Thomas Tatum and Jeffrey Kaplan.

Santa Clara County prosecutors claim that instead of offering shorter leases required by rent control, park operators m manipulated 90 prospective tenants into signing lucrative long-term lease and disguised costs that would ultimately raise their rents significantly.