Palisades Bowl residents filled the large room at the Woman’s Club on Monday night to listen as Richard H. Close of Gilchrist & Rutter, lawyer to Bowl owner Eddie Biggs, explained the steps that are being taken to convert rental spaces in the mobile home park to private ownership, much like a condominium conversion. The Palisades Bowl, one of the last affordable housing sites in the Palisades, is one of three mobile home parks on Pacific Coast Highway between Temescal and Sunset. Tahitian Terrace, a retirement community is adjacent to the Bowl on the east and to the west is Malibu Village, a condominium park owned by residents. Palisades Bowl residents own their mobile homes, but pay rent on their spaces in the park. Currently their rent is controlled by L.A. City Rent Stabilization. Close explained that in a mobile park conversion no one would be evicted and that residents will have the option of either buying their space or continuing to rent. ‘The state law encourages landlords to convert rental parks to resident owned parks,’ Close said. The Palisadian-Post contacted Close’s office in Santa Monica on Tuesday to find out which state law he was referring to, but hadn’t received a response by press time on Wednesday. Close told the audience that he has had expertise in mobile park conversions and that every park he’s been involved with has converted to private ownership. Explaining that there are specific steps a mobile home park must undergo, Close took the audience through the conversion process, which could take as long as two years to implement. First, a notice will be sent to all residents about the mobile home park conversion, which must meet City approval.. The City will make sure that the owner is complying with state law as well as looking at all documents. There will be a physical survey done as well as an appraisal of the lots. The appraiser will look at the value of the land as well as the interest of the common land, such as the pool area. After that step, a homeowners association will prepare the CC & R’s (Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions). Close said his law firm would help residents pursue a loan if they so desired. According to him, the state has a program called Mprop which helps low-income residents buy their lots. Many residents voiced an opinion that they didn’t want to buy and wondered how converting would affect their rent, which is currently under city rent stabilization. If even only one resident converts, the entire park will then be subject to state rent guidelines rather than city guidelines, meaning all residents not defined as low income (one person making $38,000 a year or less or two people making $44,000) will see their rent increased over a four-year period to fair market value as determined by an appraiser. Low-income rent will be increased by the consumer index and would stay approximately the same as it is now. One resident wondered what would happen to his property tax. Close responded that under Proposition 13, owners would have to pay one percent of the purchase price. Many residents wondered whether buying the land means they will be allowed to pour a foundation and build? ‘You will be restricted by what the state says can go into a trailer park,’ Close said. Numerous questions were raised about the deferred maintenance that still hasn’t been complete since Biggs took over ownership last September. ‘Is the hillside going to be taken care of before the sale?’ one resident asked. In a February 2005 story, the Post reported ‘Over 10 inches of rain in early January triggered a crack at the top of the Asilomar bluffs, causing the hillside to move and the streets in the Bowl to buckle. This in turn severely damaged the foundations of at least seven mobile homes, almost all of them on Ivy Bank, a street which abuts the hillside.’ In September, the Post reported, ‘Most of the residents who were evacuated from 12 units in the Palisades Bowl mobile home park in January after heavy rains caused the hillside behind the park to move and the streets to buckle, have returned to their homes. However, some of them are concerned about safety and health issues at the park as a result of the still unremediated damage.’ The hill where Palisades Bowl and Tahitian Terrace are now located were dug out and the land terraced in the 1950s. That dirt from that project was used to fill in the canyon on the lot where Palisades High now stands, according to local resident Stuart Muller. Close assured Bowl residents that the Department of Real Estate will require that current problems are taken care of before the conversion. ‘Typically what happens is the Department of Real Estate requires all deficiencies be corrected,’ Close said. ‘If the hill comes down and it costs $10 million to repair, under the conversion plan, will the homeowners share that cost with Biggs?’ a resident asked. ‘Yes,’ Close answered. ‘I was in escrow with three properties in the park, when I got a call from Biggs that the rent was going to go from $500 to $1300,’ Michelle Bolotin, a realtor for Coldwell Banker told Close. ‘I thought they were supposed to get a 90-day notice.’ Bolotin was told by Biggs that the law only applies to homeowners, not potential homeowners, but the City’s on line rent stabilization handbook, includes the following question and answer. ‘Is rent decontrolled for a mobile home site located within a mobile home park when a tenant sells the mobile home which remains on the same site? No, in accordance with Section 151.06 F2 of the RSO, if the site of a mobile home is voluntarily vacated by all the tenants as a result of a sale of a mobile home, and where the mobile home is not removed from the site, then the maximum rent may be increased by an amount not to exceed the rent on any existing comparable site in the park, or 10 percent, whichever is lower.’ A call from the Post to City Housing, which deals with rent stabilization, confirmed the guidebook’s accuracy. Biggs’ lawyer David Spangenberg was also contacted Tuesday, but did not respond by deadline. Close was very clear that he was only there to answer questions about the conversion, not about other problems the tenants were facing. ‘This park looks worse than when I moved in,’ resident Patty Grim said. ‘The road is a mess, the dirt is everywhere, it looks like Tijuana.’ Another resident who asked to remain anonymous. ‘That [the lack of maintenance] is the residual issue, but the bottom line is to stop the conversion.’
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