STANTON : Mobile Home Residents Decry Council Inaction

Dozens of residents of Stanton’s largest mobile home park appeared before the City Council this week to protest the council’s lack of action on their complaints about conditions at the park.

“It has been two months since the council voted on appointing committees to help us, and we have seen nothing on this since,” Russell Bartlett, a resident of Katella Mobile Home Estates, told the council Tuesday night.

The residents asked the council to take action against what they said was an unreasonable 6% rent increase proposed by park owner Marsha Carter.

Carter backed off the 6% rent hike, offering to lower the increase to 4%. But residents maintain that even a 4% increase would run a number of the senior citizens out of their homes.

“These people are living on fixed income,” said resident Ginger Jordan. “Most of them cannot afford rent increases at all.”

Carter is pressing forward with her plan to increase all rents in the park by 4%, if she can get 70% of the residents to agree to a long-term lease, which locks in the rent hike for three years.

If she cannot get 70% of the tenants to agree to the lease, Carter has said, she will raise rents by 6% instead.