Things just got interesting in the battle that is being waged in Boulder between mobile park owners and mobile park tenants. That’s because one of the dogs, maybe the biggest one, in the fight decided to show up.
After complaints that discrimination and retaliatory tactics were being enforced on Vista Village residents by the park’s management, the Boulder City Council adopted an ordinance and began readings on it in order to provide immediate relief to the mobile park tenants. But after Council voted unanimously to move the ordinance along, the long silent owner of the park, Harvey Miller, came forward to address what he called “misleading and false allegations” about him and Vista Village.
You’ve probably seen the issue of mobile home tenant rights covered ad nauseum in the city’s papers. Most recently, Jerry Allen, a former resident of Vista Village, who brought the issue to City Council’s attention earlier this year, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Daily Camera about what he sees as the “bamboozling” of City Council.
In case you’ve missed the story, or have tuned it out, it goes like this: Allen, 62, wanted to sell his manufactured, or mobile, home in Vista Village in early 2015. He went to Vista Village management and asked if there was anything he needed to provide in order to sell it. To Allen’s surprise, management told him he could sell the house itself, but it had to be moved off the lot. Such a sale would’ve effectively cost Allen about $40,000 in sale price, as much of the value of the home was tied to its location in the North Boulder mobile park.
Vista Village claimed that because the home was built prior to June 15, 1976, it did not meet U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) codes of safety and therefore could not remain in the park. This is despite the fact that Allen had bought the home previously in the park, and that dozens of other sales of pre-1976, or pre-HUD, homes had been approved.
So Allen reached out to the City Council with a proposed ordinance. The ordinance would, among other things, prevent mobile park owners from forcing the removal of any home based on its state of repair and livability unless approved by the City and the Colorado Division of Housing. The ordinance would also prohibit mobile park owners from blocking sales of pre-HUD homes.
This is all beside the point that in the lease signed by Allen and all other Vista Village owners, it clearly states that “Lessee agrees that if he should sell a mobile home located on the leased premises, the sales agreement will provide for delivery of the mobile home to the buyer at some location outside of and not within the Vista Village boundary.” But Allen says that rule was rarely enforced and that when it was, it was used as a retaliation or an intimidation tactic to residents that management didn’t like.
So the city took on Allen’s proposed ordinance. After giving it a first reading, Harvey Miller broke his silence, writing a letter to the city and making his local lawyer available (Miller is based in California). Among other things, Miller said Vista Village would stop preventing sales of pre-HUD homes.
Thus, Allen went on to sell his home in Vista Village without issue, but now the ordinance fight lives on. After the first reading, the ordinance was fast-tracked and City Attorney Tom Carr came back with a recommendation to move forward with the ordinance, but to remove clause 10-12-26, which would prohibit park owners from making improvements a mandatory condition to a sale. That is, it would’ve prohibited park owners from saying a home owner had to fix a dented skirt or needed new windows before they could sell their home.
The ordinance will get a third reading on July 28, and Harvey Miller has written a second letter with another one in the works. While the first letter took an explanatory tone, the second takes an aggressive one, calling out residents who he says are lying to Council or else telling half-truths in order to make their point. The upcoming third letter will be more of the same, he says.
“The volume of lies and mis-statements by the people identified in the letter was the reason for writing it,” Miller says. “If [tenants] speak out and they tell the truth and they express an opinion then that’s OK. But if they speak out and lie then I will respond by pointing out what the truthful statement is. I was very careful with my words. I quoted the false accusations, and then I stated the truth.”
Miller says the public complaints and accusations made about him do not reflect the true will of the people in Vista Village. He also set out to prove that every derogatory claim made by speakers about him or the park at public hearings was untrue.
Take, for instance, a claim made by Allen that management told the buyer of Allen’s home, Sharon Posa, that “it was a mistake to buy Jerry Allen’s home and that there were other, better homes to purchase.”
Miller says Allen is claiming Vista Village management retaliated against him for past problems and for the bringing the issue to light.
So what really happened with Allen’s home? It’s a little complicated, and it’s a good example of the kind of disputes going on at the mobile park.
Posa found a private listing for Allen’s home and went to visit it. She and her husband loved the home so they put down earnest money on it. Vista Village is not a real estate broker, so they don’t always know what homes are for sale, nor do they claim that responsibility. Allen told Posa to go to the management office and fill out the mandatory tenant application. (Vista Village requires all tenants to pass screenings.) Not knowing that Posa had already planned to buy Allen’s house, the management company handed Posa a map of available homes in Vista Village and Allen’s wasn’t included.
Posa says Allen told her not to tell management that she was interested in Allen’s home, “because he and his wife had poor relations with the park management, and he thought that it may hinder the passing of our application, but that was just my impression.”
Posa says, “my feeling was [management] was more encouraging of me to buy a new trailer,” as opposed to an older one like Allen’s, which would upgrade the park in quality (in theory) and provide more revenue for Vista Village (in theory).
But as Posa’s tenant application was in process, she got a call from Miller and a member of the park management. Miller asked Posa if she would be willing to write a letter explaining that park management never discouraged her from buying Allen’s home.
“[Miller] said, ‘Let me tell you what’s going on here. There’s a big rumor going around the park that [the manager] discouraged you from buying Jerry’s trailer,” Posa says. “‘Would you be willing to write a letter that said she did not discourage you,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely,’ because that never happened.”
But Allen still claims that Posa was coerced into writing the letter because of the timing of the request, and that his home was omitted from the listings “because they were intending to have me pull it out.”
Miller called Posa again after the sale was complete and asked her to write another letter.
“Harvey asked me, ‘How was your experience with Vista Village?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding? It was excellent,’ and he said, ‘Would you be willing to write an email to that extent saying that?’ and I said, ‘Of course I would.’ So I did so.”
What’s the big deal about all this? Well, it highlights the subjective nature of the retaliation claims. This is what Posa had to say about the whole situation looking back on it:
“I worked in a toy shop with a bunch of women, and it was like gossip central, and everything would get so twisted and bizarre. And I know how things can get blown up and out of control. I was sort of annoyed that my words were twisted, because I had mentioned to Jerry that I was encouraged to buy a new trailer and that his trailer was never mentioned. I didn’t know if Jerry had misunderstood me, or if it was just how rumors, gossip kind of goes. Anyways I was very happy to put truthfully what happened. Granted, I omitted the part that I was encouraged to buy a new trailer but that’s not what I was asked about. Harvey Miller gave me a specific question, and I gave him a specific answer, and I’m sure that’s why he asked me that way.”
So it’s clear at least that Miller wasn’t the only one tired of being mis-characterized in public. For every public claim that’s been made by a tenant, Miller has provided (and will apparently continue to provide in the third letter) evidence to refute such claims.
When one resident told Council she was being retaliated against and unfairly treated in the mobile park, Miller provided extensive documentation, including police reports and letters from the woman herself, that the reason she was served a “notice to quit” is because she was housing a convicted sex offender which is against mobile park rules, not because of unfair retaliation.
Miller went on to write of the situation that due to the woman’s “blatant violation of the Park rules, her lack of judgment and her complete disregard for the safety of her neighbors, I would suggest that she is not someone whose comments and suggestions should be taken seriously.”
In another instance, Miller called out another person who made what he says are erroneous public comments about a couple in the park who were supposedly forced by management to sell their home. The real story, Miller says, is that the man living there was arrested for domestic abuse and that in that case, an automatic restraining order is put on the offender. Miller says the man then voluntarily sold his home, and he was not “prevented … from retrieving his belongings,” and was not “suicidal” because he had been “illegally” kicked out — all of which was claimed by this other tenant in public.
Miller went on to describe several other public claims that he thought were just plain lies, with accompanying documents.
“I got sick and tired of the accusations,” he says. “I have a thick skin, and that’s why I didn’t even want to respond. I wanted to take the high road. I just didn’t want to get in the mud fight. It’s not my style. But then it got to be too much and the accusations began to get personal.”
Now it’s important to note that these are only the public claims. There still remains the silent majority of the 300-some owners in Vista Village. Miller says, “the silent majority … have specifically stated that they fear retaliation from the vocal minority.”
Allen says it’s the other way around: everyone is too scared of management to complain, and why would they be afraid of a bunch of other tenants? He also compared living in Vista Village to living in a World War II Japanese internment camp, which is not the first WWII comparison he’s made — he also compared park management to the “Gestapo,” and compared City Council to Neville Chamberlain, who bowed to Hitler, when saying that Council bowed to the demands of Miller by taking out that clause in the ordinance. In his letter, Miller took exception to the implication of who he was in that scenario.
Meanwhile, Councilwoman Lisa Morzel, who has worked for decades on mobile home rights, says she has more than 80 emails and voicemails from people mostly claiming that they have issues with Vista Village.
“So that’s a lot of people and usually if somebody takes the time to contact you, my sense is that there are other people who would like to contact you who are too busy or too intimidated,” she says.
Morzel says the Council will re-examine putting the clause back in the ordinance that would prohibit mobile park owners from preventing sales based on the repairs needed on a unit.
Morzel is particularly in the limelight here because she made at least one public claim that was untrue. During a council meeting, she claimed that she saw an old, single-wide home with a new double-wide home right behind it and jumped to the conclusion that Vista Village was forcibly removing the single-wide home to make room for the bigger one. She said she’d seen it many times in the past in other parks.
Morzel now says that was an incorrect claim.
“Maybe I had gotten the inference wrong, but I did see the home taken down and I did see the double-wide behind, and I did make that inference,” she says. “I apologize if that was incorrect, but I do know many cases [like that]. It’s not like that practice is unheard of. That’s where I came from, but it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”
Miller takes exception not only to that claim by Morzel, but also that she made that judgment without consulting Vista Village. (To that, Morzel says that she doesn’t think it’s necessary to contact the owners of a mobile home park if she’s out on her own accord (visiting friends in this instance) and sees something she wants to bring up at Council meetings.
Miller says Morzel didn’t respond to at least four calls from Miller and his associate, and he says she represents a cadre of people who are just making false claims because they don’t like the rules in the park. He says working with the City has generally been good, with one notable and predictable exception.
“I have to say that I respect eveyone on the City Council, except Lisa Morzel. I respect the way they’ve acted even those who have opposed my point of view,” he says. “They’ve been professional and thoughtful in their approach, and I understand and respect their opinion, except Lisa Morzel.”
This comment comes after Councilman Macon Cowles called Miller a “prick” at an early meeting on the ordinance.
The whole point is that this ordinance will affect mobile home owners in Boulder, a group that is clearly due for more rights, based on the repeated claims of housing abuse that have seemed to endure for decades.
What is also clear is that maybe this ordinance got passed along to a third reading too quickly and that maybe more research needed to be done in order to determine specifically what types of abuses, if any, have gone on at Vista Village. For the time being, it’s a case of tenant’s claiming one thing, and the owner saying another. One has emotion and, let’s be honest, public sentiment on its side, and the other has a lot of documents refuting most every claim made against it.
Allen may have best summed up the quandary of proving who is in the right:
“How would you prove it?” he said. “You go to City Council and you tell ’em, and that’s what we’ve been doing. That’s a public record. But I don’t know. If it gets into a tit-for-tat, legalese type situation, you know with documentation, no I don’t know that we can.”
