With over 840 mobile home parks now up for sale in America, some 50+ in California, what’s to happen to those who own mobile homes in Santa Monica? They who have chosen the more open spaced, trailer-home life amidst some nature. How will they do in tinier, light-starved, isolating apartments?

Box each other in suffocating, dehumanizing Orwellian warrens. Don’t preserve the irreplaceable and intriguing record of our past. Kill more of our cherished and endangered plants and animals. Squander precious resource by destroying, then building worse on what already functions. Abandon yet another perfectly workable small business. Twist laws to concentrate wealth so but a few can paralyze needed commerce. Further congest our roadways and make our daily travels less pleasant. Threaten the very functioning of our society. Fail to use the science we know that may stay some the hurtful climate changes our profligate over-using and wasteful hedonism will bring. Make life even more spiritless and art-starved than it has already become.

Tomorrow, July 24th, Santa Monica’s City Council will most likely approve a contested development plan on the site of the troubled, historic Village Trailer Park on Colorado Avenue. On August 2nd, the Santa Monica Rent Control Board, ironically the very body charged with offering some housing protection for those of low-income residents in this small town, will, without any hearing save a few moments of resident pleading, vote [some claim illegally] to permit a rental contract-breaking forced removal of the owned homes of those living in the Village Trailer Park.

But the latest evidence of the truth behind the modern American dream. More proof that greed is now more valued than caring. Yet again a disrespecting of the justice our society claims to espouse. Shameful.

David Latham, VTP homeowner