CITY FOCUS:

Brenda Shock sits on the patio of her tidy mobile home in Huntington Shorecliffs, surrounded by friends who live in other mobile homes throughout Huntington Beach.

With a transparent tube attached to her nose, she talks quickly, taking time for frequent sighs.

There’s a good reason for her to be anxious. Shock is on the waiting list for a kidney and liver transplant at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach and can’t afford to move out or move away.

But if a lawsuit by mobile-home park owners against the city is successful, many residents of the parks such as Shock and her neighbors fear they could go bankrupt or end up homeless. They are worried city officials will not fight the lawsuit seeking to overturn a law that prevents the mobile-home park owners from selling their land.

Shock is spearheading the effort to organize mobile-home park tenants and pressure the city into resisting the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is driven by greed, Shock and other mobile home park tenants said.

“We have many seniors, disabled people living here,” she said. “Where are we going to go? Into the desert?”

Three local mobile-home parks and an industry representative are suing the city so park owners can convert the mobile-home parks for business or other land uses.

The trouble for the owners is a provision in the city’s codes that provides relocation costs — within a 20-mile radius — for tenants if a park is converted to other uses. Without that aid, there is nowhere nearby where residents could move, said Steve Gullage, president of the Huntington Beach Mobilehome Owners Assn.

That help includes moving and trans- portation costs and the living expenses of displaced residents during the move.

“Other parks won’t take us because they are already full or accept only brand new mobile homes,” he said, adding that if the city took out the 20-mile relocation limit, tenants would be in a lot of trouble.

“If the ordinance is changed, it’ll render a lot of people into bankruptcy and in to the streets,” Shock added.

About 6,000 people live in Hunting- ton Beach’s 18 mobile-home parks.

Park owners also have to pay for the security deposit at a new address for a relocated mobile home and the difference in rent.

No one would buy a mobile home if the amendment is changed and the mobile home park is converted to some other use such as a hotel, Gullage said. “People had no problems in investing in mobile homes because they thought their investment is safe.”

“Housing prices are going up, seniors’ income is going down,” said Diane Lomond, widow of a World War II veteran. If the amendment is modified, it would render her homeless, she said.

“The resale value of our mobile home would drop to zero from $100,000,” said Roger Criswell, a tenant. He bought a new mobile home three years ago and his wife is battling cancer, he said.

Huntington Shorecliffs Mobile Home park, Pacific Mobile Home Park and Rancho Del Rey Mobile Home Estates and Manufactured Housing Educational Trust filed the lawsuit.

Making park owners buy the mobile home of a tenant who doesn’t want to relocate for the price of a new home, is “arbitrary and discriminatory” according to a petition submitted by San Bernardino-based law firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, which is representing park owners.

Attorneys representing park owners did not return several phone calls for comment.

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QUESTION

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