Glenn Bell is a friend of mine, a passionate organizer and advocate for the residents of mobile home parks who are under siege across the state from landowners who are jacking up their rents, evicting them on any pretense and using the sites for industrial parks, luxury homes and any other use the makes them richer.
Glenn prefers to call them manufactured homes and points out they provide affordable housing that can be provided at low cost on a mass scale. But they are endangered.
The brush fires his two mobile home parks hard on Monday -- Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge in the Lopez Canyon area where most residents already had been forced out and the Blue Star Mobile Home Park in Sylmar where Bell and his wife Jean live. Actually, it's where they lived because they're home was among the dozens of manufactured homes destroyed in the fires.
Glenn prefers to call them manufactured homes and points out they provide affordable housing that can be provided at low cost on a mass scale. But they are endangered.
The brush fires his two mobile home parks hard on Monday -- Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge in the Lopez Canyon area where most residents already had been forced out and the Blue Star Mobile Home Park in Sylmar where Bell and his wife Jean live. Actually, it's where they lived because they're home was among the dozens of manufactured homes destroyed in the fires.
"My house has burned to the ground. We were lucky to get out with our lives," Jean told the Daily News after fleeing with 165 other residents. I saw the trees around my home burning and then my home catch fire. There was nothing we could do."
The Times got photos of what the mobile home park looks like after the fire:
Glen talked about the problems facing manufactured home owners, particularly the elderly living on fixed incomes, at the recent Town Hall meeting of the Saving L.A. Project. Listen to what he had to say about a class of people being victimized by developers who are buying mobile home parks -- people like L.A. Times owner Sam Zell -- and how government agencies are complicit in what's going on
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
I watched Blue Star going up from Hansen Dam where we were all evacuated, and my thoughts were with Glenn. Damn...
Thank you all for you wishes and good thoughts, I don't know how after what we saw, 50 foot trees that were connected to our home up in flames. Total melting a number of our outside structures, our home miraculously survives, in no small part due to one of my crazy neighbors and the fire department. I, my family has been truly blessed.
Now we have to deal with the insurance industry to repair, patio covers, the front of my home, all the smoke damage and all of my yard, the fire was so hot it actually burned to the roots my lawn. I am amazed that no one was seriously hurt, or god forbid killed.
for that I am truly grateful
Glenn Bell
Neighborhood Friends
818-890-1113
I completely agree with Glenn. I think it is ridiculous that in Southern Calif. we don't have more mobile home parks. We don't get tornadoes or hurricanes here, we don't get many rough storms, therefore mobile housing is safe from those threats, and yet the county won't allow more of them to be built.
People say they are eyesores but they only look bad when the landlords won't allow trees to be planted. Also, compared to many of the apartment buildings in this town with drapes waving out of unscreened windows and trash blown into the parking areas, they are far more attractive than many apartment buildings.
They also allow families to have small play areas for their children, something most apartment buildings do not have.
I know the county will probably never build more of them since they always want to build up, not out, but mobile home owners do need more advocacy, that is certain.
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