Palisades mobile home park residents fight to prevent sale to developer
By Hunter Sowards
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LOS ANGELES (KCAL, KCBS) — A group of residents who lost everything in the Palisades Fire is fighting to keep their land from being sold to a luxury developer.
More than 300 people lived in the 170 homes at the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park, including Jon Brown and Beverly Narayan, both of whom owned houses there for about a decade.
“The way that they are marketing it is just concerning,” Brown said.
Brown is describing the real estate advertisement that calls the remnants of the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park a “rare coastal development opportunity.”
Brown and Narayan said the property owners bypassed people who owned homes and are now trying to redevelop the land.
“Every single one of those spaces is represented by another human being,” Brown said. “To characterize this as a clean slate is an obnoxious move to kick us all while we’re down.”
For more than a year, residents have tried cooperating with the property owners, even forming a nonprofit and working with city and county officials to protect the status that says the land cannot be rezoned for commercial use.
“When you look at mobile home tenancy law, it’s pretty specific about how you can terminate a tenancy,” Narayan said. “Wildfire or destruction of the park isn’t one of them.”
Mayor Karen Bass said people have retraumatized by this battle, and she supports every person returning home. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said there are state and local laws protecting the residents. She said her office will use every tool to help them protect that right.
“We need all these agencies to apply pressure to the owners and say, ‘You’re not going to get this change of use. This isn’t going to be a Marriott Hotel,” Brown said.
The homeowners fighting to return to their homes fear that they will have to take the property owners to court.
“That’s the only thing I can think of to make them at least come to the table and start talking,” Narayan said.
The residents said property owners have ignored their good-faith offers to buy back their homes if they are looking to sell. The Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park was a rent-controlled property with some of the only affordable homes in the entire community.
CBS LA reached out to the property owners for a statement on the residents’ claims but did not receive an immediate response.
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