ANAHEIM : Residents of Trailer Park Up in Arms

For residents of the Orange Tree Mobile Home Park, things have gone from bad to worse.

First, Anaheim announced plans to break ground soon on the long-awaited, 20,000-seat Anaheim Arena, right next door to the park.

The city will build a 10-foot-high wall around the park, install buffer landscaping to absorb noise and air pollution, and hire guards during events.

But for some residents, that’s no way to live.

“To me, it’s going to be like a prison in here,” said Mary Ellen Bambrook, an eight-year resident. “This is not going to be the type of place I imagined when I first moved in.”

Then the other shoe dropped: a $75 rent increase, starting in August, for park residents who do not have long-term leases on their lots. This brings the total increases since last August to just under $200.

Twice in one month, the residents group, the Orange Tree Homeowners Assn., has asked the City Council for a rent freeze, and twice the City Council has refused.

Some residents are trying to sell their mobile homes. But with lot rents at $675 a month--compared to about $400 a month at other parks in Anaheim--few buyers are interested.

Moving a trailer home is costly and the damage risk is high, so relocating their homes in a less expensive park is out of the question for most residents.

“It’s so pitiful, because everywhere we turn, it’s a dead end and a dollar sign, and the little people lose,” said Norma Smith, a nine-year park resident.

Smith and her husband are recovering alcoholics who became sober 11 years ago. With $5,000 to their name, they bought a mobile home and moved into the Orange Tree park to begin their new life.

Now, with $675 monthly rents plus $485 monthly mortgage payments, the couple is not too sure their future will be rosy.

“They don’t pay me as much to work in the Platinum Triangle as it costs to live in the Platinum Triangle,” Smith said of the huge business center near Anaheim Stadium where she works. “I told my husband, ‘I sure am glad we voted for the homeless last time, because I’m not sure where I’ll be.’ ”

Jack Stanaland, owner of the 25-acre park, which stares across Douglass Road to the Orange Freeway, said tenants who are “truly in need can get help” through a renters’ assistance program he offers.

“I think they’re getting the best deal for the area,” said Stanaland. “We’ve never evicted anybody for not paying the rent.”

The renters’ assistance program provides a rent subsidy for nine months. That money must be paid back at 12% interest when residents leave the park.

Stanaland maintains that expenses have been high this year because of a renter’s ongoing lawsuit against Stanaland’s company, Campanula Properties, and because of his company’s suit against the city, which charged that the environmental impact report for the new arena did not fully address the impact of the traffic and noise it will bring.

The lawsuit against the city was settled out of court in May, and Campanula will receive $115,000 in reimbursed legal fees plus $400,000 in possible damages because of the planned arena’s proximity to the mobile home park.

In addition, Stanaland maintains that residents who sign the long-term, five- and 10-year leases are not subject to the rent hikes. He said that about 190 of the park’s 200 renters have signed leases.

Mayor Fred Hunter said he has lost patience with the homeowners.

“They need to do something more than come and whine at the council meeting,” he said. “They’re really hurting their cause now.”

Stanaland agrees. “The confrontational ways some tenants have taken have really increased the costs of the mobile home park,” he said. “It truly hurts them more than it hurts me. We’re going to collect the rents regardless.”