Trailer Park Sues Westlake Village Over Rent Control

A mobile home park in Westlake Village, the only housing covered by a rent-control law in the wealthy little enclave of private homes, is suing the city in federal court, charging that the park’s owners have been unconstitutionally deprived of their property rights.

The suit by Oak Forest Mobile Estates charges that the rent-control ordinance benefits the park’s tenants, including Westlake Village Mayor Irwin Shane and Mayor Pro Tem Bonnie Klove, at the expense of the owners.

Shane and Klove were both members of the City Council that passed the ordinance by unanimous vote in June, 1982, shortly after the city was incorporated, to continue the effect of the Los Angeles County measure that had applied to the area before it became a city. Both lived in the mobile home park at the time, but Klove has since moved.

No Reaction From Officials

Klove could not be reached for comment, and Shane referred questions to the city attorney.

The park owners, M. J. Loustaunau of Ontario and Western Home Financing Corp., asked for $1 million in compensation and an order preventing the city from enforcing the law.

The suit contends that the city violated the the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution by taking the owners’ property rights, in this case profits, without compensation. They also assert that the ordinance does not provide equal protection for all property owners.

Mobile homes are usually owned by their inhabitants, who must rent land in a mobile home park for them.

The city’s rent-control ordinance is worded so that, in practice, the rental price of mobile home lots has been frozen at the level of May, 1978, plus 30%, the suit maintains.

This contrasts with the treatment of owners of apartment houses in the city, the suit said, who are allowed to bring rents up to the market value when tenants move out. When the Westlake Village ordinance was passed, the mobile home park and an apartment complex were the only rental housing in the city subject to its provisions, but the apartments have since been converted to individually owned condominiums and therefore are no longer subject to rent controls.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court on April 29, is aimed at a provision of the Westlake Village ordinance that provides that rent limits on a mobile home do not end when the owner sells the mobile home, but remain in force until the home is removed from the land.

A state law forbids owners of mobile home parks to require home sellers to vacate their lots. Given the demand for mobile home space and the protection of the state law, owners rarely move such homes.

Because the homes are almost always passed in place from one owner to another--only one has been taken out of the Oak Forest park in nine years--the Westlake Village ordinance in effect creates a permanent rent freeze, the suit charged.

Tenants’ Profits Cited

As the value of the park space increases, tenants profit by increasing the sales price of their homes, charging “tens of thousands of dollars per space . . . above and beyond the value of the particular mobile home,� profits that should go to the owners of the land, the suit alleges.

Michael Jenkins, Westlake Village city attorney, said the California Supreme Court upheld the mobile home provisions of a Carson rent-control ordinance “just like the law we have in Westlake village� in a ruling last year.

Jenkins said the owners of the mobile home park “have never even come before the city rent-control board to ask for an adjustment, so I must assume they are getting a fair rent.

“The owners have no constitutional right to anything more than a fair return on their investment.�

George Kimball, attorney for the park owners, said, “The issues in this case are quite different from those in the Carson case,� but he did not want to discuss details.