Hi Ellen and David,

I just wanted to add a few things to what David said, which I agree with 100% except, as explained below, it is not correct that any party involved in this situation has ANY RIGHTS except us. Everyone else wants to MANEUVER TO GET RIGHTS. The main point is–even if he were offering a compromise, which he is not when reading what his spokesperson says, 10 or so homes are being planned to be here, where the public has a right to 109 rental spaces of land and housing services, for homes people own — there is no room for compromise with Luzzatto or the City. We handed out our Tenant Impact Report with this JFK quotation on the front of it, to people attending Luzzatto’s “revelation” of his “new” plan on May 19, 2012–the last iteration of something supposedly different, but actually same-old, same-old in effect: “You cannot negotiate with people who say, what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is open to negotiation.”

We have seven layers of rights to live here without being disturbed (“quiet enjoyment of our tenancies”), owning our own homes on this very land in perpetuity (private property rights to live on this land, which as Adam Smith said is the basis for all wealth), with rights to sell, rent out, upgrade, replace, and will our homes to our heirs, as people had here before rent control, and as all homeowners in a capitalist system supposedly have. ALL OF OUR RIGHTS, NOT SOME SILLY INFERIOR SUBSTITUTE, ARE WHAT WE WILL HAVE, one way or another.

Long ago I wrote to you all and said the only question is whether the City will do what’s lawful and right on its own, or will have to be forced by the courts to do that. People who say as Sabrina Venskus did to the City Council that Luzzatto can “raze the Park and watch the grass grow” are so unaware of the interaction between rent control, the Mobilehome Residency Law, the tenant impact requirements in Civil Code section 64427.4, and all our other rights, as to be shocking, coming from a professional representing some of the residents here. Mayor Bloom asking her how many “tenants” are still here, and Pam O’Connor constantly saying we are just like tenants being Ellised from apartment buildings–what abominable ignorance this late in the day! Inexcusable.

We are homeowners who are also tenants in a mobilehome park covered by rent control in California. In that respect, we have all the rights of homeowners PLUS all the rights tenants had prior to both Ellis and Costa-Hawkins, since both state they do not apply to mobilehome parks. That is the main reason everyone in town should be on our side. If we can be moved and disturbed and some of us killed by development, how safe are single family homeowners? Not covered by rent control, they are at the mercy of the Council, which panders to any developer who comes along with a plan to pay millions in fees in advance and after a development is built. They don’t care if it is a slum in 20 years. They will have built all their parks on the beach and paid off the debt they unwisely entered into counting on now-gone redevelopment money and fees and taxes from a booming economy. In the meantime, life goes on for them, continuing their spendthrift, mindless developing ways.

It doesn’t matter to the Council whose rights are violated, any more than it bothered the Council of the early 70s to allow demolition of thousands of apartments and homes. We are the Maginot Line against overdevelopment, particularly in the East end of town, particularly as it hurts minorities, the poor and seniors more than it hurts other people. However, there is no doubt when the Council has succeeded in giving away homes of the “gypsies, homosexuals, and Jews,” so to speak, they will come for all of your homes, too. Santa Monica will turn into Miami at best, but these elitists love Chicago, Manhattan and Boston better, so someday their ilk will want to see 90-story skyscrapers along the beach and elevated trains running every two minutes. Not North of Montana or West of Lincoln, of course, since that will be the Council majority’s neighborhood then, as it is now and as it was in the 70s. However, absolutely everywhere else. It’s only a matter of time and when developers “progress” to offering them enough money and coming with the “right,” “modern” plans.

Nonetheless, in spite of ourselves and being right on top of what was happening, the courts told us we have to lose first before we can get an injunction against what Luzzatto and the City are doing here and have been doing for six years personally and 16 years through the prior owner Murumatsu’s neglect along with unlawful actions of their management company since the late 90s, J & H Asset Management of La Habra. Therefore, there are 49 empty spaces here, 750 square feet each. That totals almost an acre’s worth of land in separate square feet, The good thing is there is lots of sun in those spaces, and an orchard of fruit and nut trees can be planted on the borders.

That is why I am asking everyone to imagine how those spaces can best be used when the three companies involved go bankrupt and give us the Park to settle our damage cases against them, this Park and the assets of their companies being for most causes of action the only assets at risk. (The City with a knowing, decades-long policy of bulldozing houses of the poor for the convenience of the rich is another matter.)

It is possible the Park could be restored to what it was before all this happened, but Luzzatto destroyed the landscaping along with the trailers, so we can imagine something different and better, actually. I see there is an article in today’s LA Times, p. E-9, about a Parisian artist putting modern sculpture all around a Neutra house and studio in Hollywood. That is the kind of monument to the mid-Century museum this was, as well as evolving laboratory of what modern, money-making small houses and work spaces can be, which I think this Park should become.

I am visualizing it more clearly every day. Always open to other right visions, however. There is actually room here for all right thinkers’ and dreamers’ visions. No bulldozers need apply.

In peace, love, and solidarity,

Brenda Barnes