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Novato mobile home park dispute
Residents of the Marin Valley Mobile Country Club are fighting to ensure their community remains affordable and transitions to resident ownership as reportedly agreed upon decades ago.
NOVATO, Calif. - Residents of a major affordable mobile home park in Novato say they are continuing a decades-long fight to keep their community in their own hands. The 400 residents who live in the 311 homes that comprise the Marin Valley Mobile Country Club fear losing their community and are now receiving assistance from You Are the Power, a nationwide tax-exempt organization that uses social media to help citizens navigate local government disputes.
What was promised
The backstory:
Three decades ago, the city of Novato floated bonds to support low-income, affordable housing. The agreement dictated that residents would pay for all bonds, expenses, and maintenance at no cost to the city. With those bonds set to be paid off next year, residents maintain the deal included a major provision: a transfer of ownership.
"We were promised. Couldn't be in writing at the time, but we were promised that at the end of this transaction, when the bonds were retired, that we would be transferred the park for the benefit of the residents into a nonprofit corporation," said David Kenyon, who served as the residents' attorney and broker when the original deal was reached.
Current residents say they have fulfilled their end of the bargain, paying nearly 30 years of loans and interest totaling close to $30 million. They argue that both the intention of the deal and the supporting city documents point toward the park becoming self-owned in a nonprofit form.
Simply surviving
For many, the stakes are a matter of survival.
"There's so many residents here on very, very low income that could not afford to move anyplace and didn’t have the physical wherewithal to do that either," said resident John Hansen. Resident Brad Witherspoon added that the partnership with You Are the Power is intended to help spread the message to the rest of Novato that the residents have already paid for the park in full.
The city of Novato has not provided a statement regarding the residents' claims. Calls to the city’s main office reached an answering machine, and the city attorney did not return a request for comment from his private law practice.