Written by John Sisker
(The
following in my personal opinion and is presented here for your
information only. It is not intended to render any specific
and/or legal advice, nor to disparage, slander, and/or libel
any person and/or organization.)
This is in response and a follow-up, direct from the troops,
for the article titled "Most mobile home residents happy with
quality of life" by Phillip Bonney, of the Huntington Beach/Fountain
Valley Independent newspaper dated March 5, 1998.
The
Mobile Home Advisory (Review) Board for the City of Huntington
Beach unanimously approved $15,000 to commission a sample type
gathering survey (poll) of the mobile/manufactured home owners
within our City boundaries. The intent was obviously to show
all concerned, what we have all been touting for years, that
mobile/manufactured home residents need some type rent control
or stabilization, or at the very least, some form of relief
from the ever escalating space payments.
Unfortunately,
the end result of this survey showed that the vast majority
of the City’s mobile/manufactured home owners, an extremely
high percentage rate in fact, are quite content with everything
-- including rents for the most part.
Ever
since the release of this now public document, there are those
with apparent and creative explanations of trying to repaint
or justify every select category on this survey to make it come
out different, but the statistics simply speak for themselves.
However, many of us do know better - there are indeed problem
areas here and there in a few mobile/manufactured home parks.
Yet, in my opinion, commissioning such a survey with the same
generic questions to very mobile/manufactured home owner may
not have been the best choice. What others failed to realize
is that the mobile/manufactured home owners are not the problem
- it is where they live that could be.
By
failing to realistically identify the particular park where
individual concerns have been coming from, all responses are
now collectively pooled, skewing the final results. Therefore,
according to the survey, it looks like the vast majority of
us mobile/manufactured home owners have no problems at all and
are quite content with everything. This is certainly not the
case.
Even
though the individual parks were not identified, apparently
all but two were included in this survey, because of some City
slip-up. Now mysteriously, the claim is these two missing parks
were really the main culprits for all the problems anyway. Obviously,
the hope is that, if these two missing parks were counted in
the original survey, the end result would have been a much different
response. Not so, according to Gary Lawrence, Ph.D., of Lawrence
Research. He stated that, "if these two parks came in with
a response entirely the opposite of the other parks, the average
would not change more than 2%." If fact, he personally
offered to go back to these two missing parks, and survey them
as well, just to prove the point.
Likewise,
the three mobile home park owners represented at the time on
the City Mobile Home Advisory Board, somehow had the majority
of responses from their own parks, in comparison to all the
other parks. Yet, lets all keep in mind, that these so-called
problems we supposedly aim to fix, including excessive high
rents, are really coming from only four parks within the City
anyway. If two problem parks were not in the survey, remember,
the other two were. In reality, these four parks have been the
problem for years - way before this survey, and even way before
the Advisory Board. Now we apparently discover that as an average,
we have no problems at all.
In
my personal opinion, we should go back with only the most pertinent
of the questions to find out what parks are they coming from.
This way, you will start seeing a precedence or trend in one
park over another. This will also identify your real problem
areas. For, in reality, we need to isolate these particular
problem parks and stop trying to fix situations that simply
do not exist elsewhere.
Even
though this survey will be under study for some time to come,
we have now let the cat out of the bag and are dealing from
a highly weakened foundation. Unfortunately, what I think may
happen now, is the very survey and statistics that was insisted
upon to show our problems, will now be used by officials and
decision makers to show we don’t have any - and thus quite possibly
no future need for mobile home rent control.
Footnote:
As predicated, when select mobile/manufactured home owners groups
later proposed a rent control ordinance within the City, in
spite of the survey results, the opposition came back in force.
The were successful in getting a citywide initiative on the
ballot, and low and behold, 70% of the citizens voted against
any form of rent control for anyone. So much for working in
a vacuum.
Disclosure...
