Sacramento seniors say they face harassment and eviction threats at mobile home park
The previous managers of the mobile home park appointed Maria Ruiz “the sunshine lady” — she was in charge of welcoming new residents who moved in and sending get-well cards when people got sick.
New management of Capital Mobile Estates, however, sees her differently. It sent Ruiz multiple notices saying she could be evicted from her small home in the quiet gated park near Lemon Hill. Then, in a long letter sent by an attorney in August, management said Ruiz made “terrorist threats or racial/ethnic insults.”
Ruiz denied she made terrorist threats or used racist language; she also denied most of the other allegations made by the attorney, Stephanie D. Rice. But the letter ended by saying that if Ruiz failed to comply within seven days, “Management will serve you with a ‘Sixty (60) Day Notice of Termination of Tenancy.’”
Ruiz, 82, is a retired teacher. She moved back to California in 2013 after her husband, Ted Druch, was diagnosed with cancer; they bought their home at Capital Mobile Estates in 2018. Ruiz and a few friends take regular morning walks through the park’s neat grid of streets.
Flanked by pedestrian-hostile stretches of the 65th Street Expressway and Stockton Boulevard, the park provided an affordable oasis with a regular pinochle game in the clubhouse.
The property has had the same owner since the 1970s. It used to be a seniors-only community, and around half of the people spread among more than 200 units now are, like Ruiz and her husband, retired, often living on fixed incomes. The homes are smaller less expensive than standard homes; they come with lower property taxes. The LLC owns the land on which their houses sit, and residents pay around $800 a month in rent.
Now, Ruiz and others living at the park say the park’s manager is harassing them as their Beverly Hills-based landlord ignores them.
‘A level of fear’
Residents said that since the new manager was hired in mid-2021, a slew of seven-day notices threatening potential eviction proceedings over minor infractions has many of them terrified, particularly in a region crushed by high housing prices.
The manager has been sending the type of notice that could be the prelude to a formal eviction process; residents have complained to the landlord, Capital Mobile Estates LLC’s agent Avram Salkin, but they said he has not responded.
Ruiz said the manager “has sown such a level of fear in this park because she’s always threatening eviction.”
Salkin and the park manager did not comment on the allegations.
The same attorney that sent Ruiz the warning letters responded on behalf of the entire LLC. “Management cannot address individual resident files with the media,” Rice wrote to The Bee, saying there were privacy concerns. “That said, I would like to note Capital Estates handles all lease-related compliance issues in strict accordance with the Mobilehome Residency Law.”
Ruiz, Druch and four others at Capital Mobile Estates said the park manager, Lydia Mitchell, has issued seven-day eviction warnings because, for example, one resident, Laura Page, parked her car too close to the street while still in her driveway; and two more residents, Mark Hepfner and Linda Rhodes, had a sun shade over their hot tub.
Katherine Brawley, 85, said she received an intimidating letter about a year ago from the law firm representing the park; the letter accused her of stealing coffee and sugar from the clubhouse. “I’m diabetic,” she said. “I don’t use sugar.”
Ruiz said another resident got a seven-day notice because she placed potted plants in her driveway.
Linda Nye, the president of the Golden State Manufactured-home Owners League who helped start a chapter of the organization at the park, pointed to the state’s Mobilehome Residency Law. The law says that “substantial violation of a mobilehome park rule shall be deemed a public nuisance.” Nye explained that with a long record of alleged — even frivolous — violations, it could be easier for a landlord to evict a tenant.
A lot of mobile homeowners are elderly, Nye said, “and (these notices) scare the hell out of them, to put it bluntly.”
Frank Wodley, the publisher of Mobilehome Magazine, agreed. He said that the situation Ruiz and her neighbors described is commonplace.
“It is so threatening,” he said, recalling the string of notices he received living at a park in Chatsworth in Los Angeles in the early 2000s. “These poor mobilehome owners, oftentimes seniors, don’t have the money to hire an attorney and go to court.”
When it comes to mobilehome residency law, he said, “There’s no government agency that is gonna enforce anything against an abusive manager. ... The enforcement is placed on (residents’) shoulders.”
Shortly after Mitchell started working at the Capital Mobile Estates, she sent Ruiz a notice that said her “failure to comply” with the demands within a week “may result in legal proceedings to terminate your tenancy.” The manager wrote in June 2021 that Ruiz had broken the rules by hosting a guest with a pet and by bringing her small dog into the community’s clubhouse.
Ruiz acknowledged her dog was in the clubhouse but countered the dog was leashed and only there briefly. She said she never hosted a guest who brought a pet. Regardless, she said she was flabbergasted to receive such a stern notice as her first warning.
“That,” she said, “was the beginning of it.”
Soon after, Ruiz started working with Nye to organize residents to form a chapter of the Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League. She was elected the chapter president.
The muted boxy facade of Ruiz’s house blends with the neighborhood and belies the vibrant interior, where she has filled her windows with orchids and hung her own paintings of scenes from abroad. The former vagabond has grown to love this little house. With her fingernails painted electric blue, Ruiz held up a book of the state mobile home residency laws. On her coffee table, a binder was bursting with correspondence between her and management.
“I wasn’t about to be cowed by this thing,” she said.
Lawyer’s letters of accusations
Ruiz has made it a point to learn her rights. “The truth of the matter is, (management) can’t evict you for anything,” she said. “You have to go before a judge, and the judge issues the order of eviction.”
But nonetheless, she said, many people in the park are still afraid that they could lose their housing over something like a potted plant in their driveway.
Ruiz in particular has faced escalating warnings.
In that letter from an Arden Arcade law firm dated Aug. 11, Rice threatened to evict Ruiz and her husband, Druch, over Ruiz’s violations of park rules, mostly her “substantially annoying behavior.”
The lawyer enumerated a broad range of conduct that is “substantially annoying,” ranging from violent threats to “frequent improper street parking.” The attorney said she had disturbed the peace, harassed management and made “terrorist threats” or racist insults.
The threats or racist insults that were part of her alleged annoying behavior are not specified in the letter.
The letter repeatedly mentioned that she had advertised community events such as a Fourth of July party by putting flyers into PVC tubes that are attached to mailbox posts, which was, the attorney wrote, forbidden. It was unclear whether residents’ use of the PVC tubes were specifically mentioned in the community’s rules, which define them as “the property of the Community.”
The attorney also alleged that Ruiz tampered with a water meter on the property, resetting a sprinkler and causing flooding and water waste that could lead to a fine from the city.
The attorney cited an anonymous eyewitness who said they saw Ruiz breaking into the timer box and simultaneously explaining her plan. The eyewitness described in the letter called this “the most devious thing I have ever saw (sic) anyone do in all my years.”
Ruiz denied this accusation. She pointed out that she can barely use her smartphone, and that she recently enlisted her granddaughter’s help just to check her voicemails.
A controversial parking spot and a beloved fig tree
Because so many people have received seven-day notices, any interaction with management — particularly Mitchell — is fraught, said Mark Hepfner, 65, who lives down the street from Ruiz and Druch.
He’s disabled, and his truck doesn’t fit in his driveway. In 2016, he received written permission from the managers at the time to park in front of the fence at a dead end near his home rather than parking in a farther designated handicapped spot.
The managers wrote, in a letter dated March 14, 2016, “The unmarked space can be used for resident parking on a first come first served basis.”
Without warning, Hepfner said, new management put up a “no parking” sign on the fence Aug. 12 and removed the curb stops.
“I will go park my truck up by the clubhouse in a handicapped spot and hope I don’t injure myself walking back to my house,” he wrote in an email to Salkin — he lives about 500 feet from the clubhouse.
Before the parking conflict, Hepfner and his wife, Rhodes, received other seven-day notices from Mitchell; Hepfner said, “I’ve lost count.” Most recently, they got a notice from the manager saying they had seven days to take down a sun shade they had over their hot tub or else they could be evicted. The notice described the shade as a clothesline.
He and Rhodes viewed this as harassment. The parking space conflict was one thing too many, and they put the house up for sale on Aug. 16.
“It’s supposed to be nice, quiet retirement, but we’re wondering, ‘what’s next?’ And we shouldn’t have to live like that,” Hepfner said. “We’ve had enough of this place.”
But Ruiz doesn’t want to leave the park. She and Druch painted their living room yellow and peach; the walls are filled with paintings — many by Ruiz, and one by a Thai elephant. They have a peach tree and a fig tree out back, and in the front, Ruiz tends to a garden full of native plants.
It’s their home, they said, so they’re going to stay and fight, newly united through their chapter of the Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League.
“You have to get organized,” Druch said, “if you want to get anything done.”
Ruiz said she’s still waiting for the lawyers to send her that 60-day eviction notice.
This story was originally published September 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
