A Recent News Article Regarding Tatum Kaplan...

Mobile home park residents seek repeal of El Monte ordinance banning rent control

By Maritza Velazquez
twitter.com/MaritzaSGVN

Posted:   08/06/2012 09:02:49 PM PDT

Sandi Witt in front of her mobile home along with other residents have complained about the conditions and high rent for years and now have a chance to reverse a city ordinance that would allow the city to be involved at the Brookside Mobile Home Park on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012 in El Monte, Calif. (SGVN/Staff Photo by Keith Birmingham)

EL MONTE - The City Council has approved a November ballot measure that would allow El Monte to enact rent control regulations on the city's 33 mobile home parks.
That option has been off limits due to a 1990 voter-approved ordinance titled "The Mobilehome Tenant Rent Assistance Program."
While it provided a 10 percent rental discount for low-income seniors, the ordinance also included a clause essentially barring the city from imposing rent control regulations on mobile home park landowners in El Monte.
A majority vote by residents on Nov. 6 would repeal that ordinance.
The City Council could then chose to introduce an ordinance on rent control, requiring the approval of a majority of councilmembers.
The issue was sparked by residents of the Brookside Mobile Country Club, 12700 Elliot Ave., who say they're desperate for reprieve from skyrocketing rents and poor park maintenance.
Since Councilwoman Norma Macias found out about the problems at Brookside last year, she's been pushing to do something about it.
"I think if we can put this measure on the ballot and hopefully bring some justice to these people, we can certainly try to help them," Macias said.
Although a rent control ordinance could be in the future for El Monte's mobile home parks, some opponents say it's not the best way to go about keeping prices fair.
Generally, these ordinances - like one La Verne has in place - limit the amount
that property owners can hike rents. In many cases, that limit is set by the Consumer Price Index. "Rent control is incredibly bad policy and that's why years have gone by and no cities in California have passed it," said David Evans, senior regional representative of the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association.
It pits residents against owners and unfairly favors residents, Evans said. The ordinances also pose high administrative costs for cities to administer, he said.
Rent control was popular in the 1970s and 80s, but many cities have done away with such policies, Evans said.
Approximately 21 percent of California's cities still have them in place, he said.
Several Brookside residents came before the City Council last week, painting a daunting picture of tenants caught in a precarious situation in which their monthly payments rise every year.
While some residents at Brookside pay more than $1,000, the average rent at El Monte's mobile home parks is $489 for a single-wide space and $557 for a double-wide space, according to a city survey in which 18 of 33 total park owners in the city responded.
Brookside did not respond to that survey, city officials said.
Representatives of Brookside's management company, Mobile Community Management did not respond directly to inquiries regarding resident complaints, instead providing a fact sheet.
According to that fact sheet, 90 percent of residents "have voluntarily elected over the years to sign long-term leases, which clearly specify rent levels and the method of calculating future annual rent increases for the term of the lease."
Monthly rent includes water and trash pick up, according to the response.
The management company is owned by Los Angeles-based Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group, which was involved in the passage of the 1990 ballot initiative, which also abolished a rent control ordinance that had been enacted in El Monte two years earlier, according to city officials.
While residents at mobile home parks own their coach, they lease the land that it sits on.
Among those Brookside residents is Sandi Witt, a 63-year-old woman who moved with her mother to the mobile home park four decades ago and has seen her monthly rent far exceed her income since the mid-1980s.
For example, in 2007 she paid around $782 a month for rent, according to a bill.
Currently, she pays more than $1,100 to rent her space while she only earns $875, Witt said.
If it wasn't for local food banks, she wouldn't eat, Witt said.
And those rent payments are going to rise again.
According to a notice Witt received last month, beginning in November her payments will be $1,191.23.
However, she can qualify for an "adjusted monthly rate" of $1,135.04 if she agrees to settle a lawsuit she and other residents have filed against Brookside's owners, according to the document.
She's not settling, Witt said.
"As it stands, with this rent increase, I'm probably going to be a 605 (freeway) bridge resident," she said.
Witt is part of a 2009 lawsuit filed by one-third of Brookside residents claiming the park's owners have failed to maintain the park, she said. Attorneys representing the group did not return phone calls seeking comment.
"The Park denies, and is vigorously defending against the allegations contained in the lawsuit," Brookside representatives said in its fact sheet.
More than half of the plantiffs in the lawsuit have moved or settled their claims with Brookside, according to the company.
Witt pointed to the collapsing embankment behind her trailer and said it's one more indication that the residents are not being taken care of despite the exorbitant rent they pay.
Another man who wished to remain anonymous pointed out large cracks in the pavement that had unsuccessfully been covered in slurry seal.
However, two workers nearby cleaned one of many empty lots in the park. And at the clubhouse, one woman mopped near the front door, which faced a well-manicured grassy area featuring a playground slide.
According to online advertisements, the rent at some mobile home parks in areas like Pomona, Palmdale and Oakland run about $500. One in Huntington Beach is advertised at $1,495. Another in Brea shows monthly rent at $975.
Although Brookside tenants said they'd like to move out, they can't afford it.
It can cost thousands to move a trailer from one lot to another.
"It would take all my money to move," one resident said. "So you just have to walk away."
The owners of Brookside - Tatum-Kaplan and their management company Mobile Community Management - have faced multiple lawsuits in Orange and San Bernardino counties from mobile home park residents complaining of much of the same issues alleged at Brookside.
Jeffrey Kaplan, a lawyer who heavily invested in the mobile-home business in the 1980s, owns more than a dozen mobile-home parks in Southern California, according to archives from the California Secretary of State's office.
In 1996, Kaplan led an unsuccessful state initiative similar to El Monte's 1990 ordinance that would have done away with rent controls for California's mobile home parks.
"It's just been very frustrating for me to not have been able to really do really for these residents," Macias said.
maritza.velazquez@sgvn.com
626-962-8811, ext. 2236



 FAIR USE NOTICE. The Mobile Home Park Lease Alert is not the author of this article and the posting of this document does not imply any endorsement of the content by The Mobile Home Park Lease Alert.  This document may contain copyrighted material the use of which may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The Mobile Home Park Lease Alert is making this article available on our website in an effort to advance the understanding of mobile home park residency issues in California. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

They are still at it...

Sixteen years ago a news article was written about one of the Tatum Kaplan owned parks in San Jose, Ca.  (Immobile Homes)  It spelled out the questionable business practices of the Tatum Kaplan organization.  Well sixteen years later here is another in depth article that shows that rent gouging still exists in Tatum Kaplan owned parks.

Councilwoman angered by conditions, rent prices at El Monte mobile home park

by Daniel Tedford, San Gabriel Valley Tribune
September 22nd, 2011

Councilwoman Norma Macias is speaking out against what she calls "shameful" conditions at a local mobile-home park.

Macias recently visited Brookside Mobile Country Club, next to Mountain View High School, after receiving complaints from some residents of deplorable conditions and exorbitant rents.

The councilwoman said she intends to do whatever she can, including raising the issue with her council colleagues, to support residents of the park.

"What is taking place here is nothing short of criminal, to take advantage and gouge these people," Macias said. "I, for certain, want to make an issue of what is going on here. We need to do our best to protect our residents."

Officials with Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group, which owns the park through its subsidiary Brookside Investments LTS, declined an interview request for this story. The park's management company, Mobile Community Management Co., a Santa-Ana based group also owned by Kaplan, responded with a fact sheet about the property and company.

Macias, who is considering running for the new 32nd Congressional District, said mobile- home residents are naturally placed in a tough situation when it comes to renting spaces for their homes. Despite the name, mobile homes are often difficult to move because they are damaged or a transfer is too costly. Park owners take advantage, Macias said.

"These people are stuck," she said. "The landlord knows these people are stuck. It really breaks my heart."

One resident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said his family has lived in the community for more than 30 years and has seen their rent skyrocket.

When they first lived there, rent was $100. Now, it is $1,160 a month "just for the dirt," he said.

According to the U.S. Census American Community Survey, the median rent for apartments and homes in El Monte from 2005 to 2009 was $1,003.

The man said he would move from Brookside but doesn't have the money.

"It can cost $10,000 to move one of these," he said. "We live on a fixed income, and (the landlords) know it. It is all for the money."

Some people have moved away. Walking through the more than 400-space mobile home park at 12700 Elliot Ave., it is easy to tell the park has numerous vacancies. Bare, gray cement slabs are scattered throughout as homes have been removed or transferred. Other homes have been left behind, now boarded up to prevent transients from squatting.

"They have an astonishing rate of vacancy," El Monte redevelopment attorney Dave Gondek said.

Roads are cracked and in one area of the park a former retaining wall is broken and buried beneath a hill of sand.

The park's poor appearance also stems from some residents' lack of concern or an inability to perform maintenance, officials said. Some homes are cracked and worn, and others have overgrown brush and weeds.

Police Capt. Santos Hernandez said police and city staff helped an elderly resident by cutting back overgrown shrubs in the back of her property.

Code-enforcement officers said they are reviewing the property, including the retaining wall, but had no determinations on violations.

Rent control

Like the feudal system in medieval England in which a free man owned his cottage and a feudal lord owned the land and charged a fee for using it, most mobile-home residents own their homes but rent the land beneath the property.

Renters at the Brookside property said rent ranges from $1,000 to $1,500.

Officials with other local cities said mobile-home spaces rent for about $800 or less. Glendora has rent control that keeps rents at about $800. Advertisements show rents in Palmdale, Riverside and Pomona for more than 1,000- square-foot lots are about $450. The Whittier East Community rents lots at $593 a month. In Laguna Beach, a 2,400-square- foot lot is advertised at $1,876.

Unlike Glendora, El Monte doesn't have rent control because of a 1990 ballot initiative. That same initiative also prevents the city from even trying to revisit the issue, which was passed with the help from the owners of Brookside, the Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group, Gondek said.

In 1988, in an effort to stymie rapidly increasing rents for mobile-home parks, the City Council adopted a rent-control ordinance, Gondek said.

It established an avenue for rent review between tenant and park owner with mediators overseeing the review.

Park owners challenged the ordinance with a referendum, but narrowly lost.

Two years later in 1990, the Tatum-Kaplan group, led by Jeffrey Kaplan, brought forth an initiative that proposed to abolish the rent-control ordinance, Gondek said. The selling point of the new plan was rental assistance for low-income senior citizens. Those who qualified would receive a 10 percent discount on rent.

Voters passed the ordinance, and it has been the rule of law ever since.

And if the city ever wanted to challenge it, it couldn't, Gondek said. The redevelopment attorney said Kaplan's team was "clever," and within the language of the voter- approved ordinance, the city is forbidden from contributing any staff time or city funds toward efforts to overturn the law or establish rent control.

For the city to get involved, a new ballot initiative must overturn the law to free the city, Gondek said.

"The language of the ordinance pretty much puts the city of El Monte, as a unit of local government, in a straitjacket," he said.

The mobile home market

A $1,200 rent at a mobile home park should pay for a top-of-the-line, large space in a well-to-do neighborhood, according to mobile home expert Jim Anderson.

Anderson is the vice president of Golden State Manufactured-home Owners League, a group that advocates for mobile home residents.

He lives in a mobile home in La Verne. He said the most expensive lot for rent where he live is $925. That is the biggest lot at the property, which is well-maintained and includes several amenities, he said.

Anderson said Brookside's rates are out of whack with the market.

“For El Monte, that seems like an excessive amount,” he said.

It is a common problem for mobile home residents to get caught in gouging situations, Anderson said.

In some instances of older mobile homes, owners must get clearance from the city to move the home and are sometimes denied if the building isn't structurally sound, Anderson said. Park owners are often aware which homes can and can't be moved.

“They know they can squeeze,” Anderson said.

Anderson's group tries to help mobile home owners understand their rights.

For instance, all owners should know they have options secured by law when renting a space for their home, including a month-to-month program or a long-term lease. In addition, if a resident has a lease, they are entitled to 90 days' notice for a rent increase, Anderson said.

Mobile Community Management said they have programs to assist residents with their rent, including a voluntary emergency rent stabilization it initiated in 2008. The park will give a discount on annual rent increases through the program, which 30 percent of residents have opted for, according to the company's fact sheet. The resident has to submit to a modified contract to get the discount.

Tatum-Kaplan's history

Anderson said he is familiar with the Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group, the firm that owns numerous mobile-home parks under several business names, including Brookside.

"They have a tendency to look at the bottom line. A lot of them are that way," he said.

Jeffrey Kaplan and Thomas Tatum own Mobile Community Management Company. Although that company runs Brookside, the land at Brookside is owned by First National Finance, another organization run by Kaplan and Tatum, according to company officials and the Los Angeles County Assessor's Office.

Kaplan, a lawyer who heavily invested in the mobile- home business in the 1980s, owns more than a dozen mobile-home parks in Southern California, according to records from the California Secretary of State's office.

He purchased the Brookside park in the 1980s and initially leased the land, including a 2.1-acre parcel from El Monte Union High School District, city officials said. He later bought the property, including a 2004 deal to buy the school district property for $450,000, according to the purchase agreement.

Kaplan also led a failed state initiative in 1996, similar to the El Monte ordinance, to do away with rent control for mobile homes.

Kaplan and his companies have had their share of lawsuits regarding mobile home parks. Kaplan, Tatum or Mobile Community Management are named in 11 civil suits in San Bernardino County dating back to 1998 and another 10 in Orange County from 1989 to 2010, including fraud, unfair business practices and breach of contract.

A lawsuit has also been filed by residents at Brookside, but attorneys representing the group did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Objecting to rent increases, some Brookside residents formed an association in 2008 and threatened a rent strike, according to the fact sheet provided by Mobile Community Management.

In 2009, about one-third of Brookside residents filed a lawsuit against their landlords after meetings with them dissolved, according to the sheet. Park managers deny any wrongdoing, according to the fact sheet.

Residents disagree.

"They are finding the fastest way to get money out of people's pockets," a resident said.

FAIR USE NOTICE. The Mobile Home Park Lease Alert is not the author of this article and the posting of this document does not imply any endorsement of the content by The Mobile Home Park Lease Alert.  This document may contain copyrighted material the use of which may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The Mobile Home Park Lease Alert is making this article available on our website in an effort to advance the understanding of mobile home park residency issues in California. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.