Troubles in paradise

Trailer park residents living in a cut-rate Shangri-la on the shore may sue to buy the park from their landlord.Here’s the real estate listing:

Two bedroom, two bath estate. Front porch, rear yard and area for deck. Ocean views and Pacific Coast Highway address. Two minute walk to beach. Asking price: $99,000.

The Cabrillo Mobile Home Park, a seaside mobile park where residents can still buy a unit for under a hundred grand and check out the waves each day from their front porch, is one of the last of its kind in coastal Orange County. But after years of Bohemian living, residents at the park say the vibe of the 45-trailer park has started going sour. Space rental rates have more than doubled, and maintenance of the park has practically fallen by the wayside.

In a last-ditch effort to maintain their way of life, residents are organizing a possible lawsuit to buy the park from their current landlord, but many obstacles stand in the way.

“We’ve been here a long time and we really love it,” said Mary Jo Baritech, president of the park’s homeowners association. “It’s always been our dream to own this place.”

Mobile home parks -- where residents pay between $50,000 to $100,000 for a manufactured home and a monthly fee to rent a space to place it on -- are one of the last truly affordable housing markets in California.

For decades the property was owned by Caltrans; the transportation agency bought it in 1965 with plans to eventually use it for a freeway.

“They were a great landlord because they never bothered us about anything, but they never fixed anything either,” Baritech joked.

The association pooled its money together for many years to keep the park in order. They paved their own road around the park, maintained the small clubhouse and pool and watched over the 26-acre Big Shell wetlands just south of their property.

“Mary Jo [Baritech] and I even worked to build a community garden,” resident Ken Havens said from inside his posh double-wide with hardwood floors inside and a Zen meditation garden outside. “It was a pretty happening place to be -- everyone was different, but everyone got along real well.”

Differences still abound at the park, although residents say new landlord Mills Land and the Water Co. have tried to crack down on some of the oddities. They’ve tried to get homeowner John McGregor, 82, to move his Air Stream Silver Streak from in front of his house; he says he needs the trailer for storage and emergency heating.