As if her view were obvious to all, she said glumly that “anybody with a head on his shoulders can see this park has a very short future.”
The Fruits of Her Research
From her porch and through her windows, she has made a thorough study of the ever-changing relations between and among residents. The feelings of many seem made of liquid.
Prior to the several months of heated dispute leading up to last October’s pivotal vote by the Redevelopment Agency, many residents lived isolated lives. Keeping to themselves, they only knew the names of several neighbors.
“The east and west ends of the park were like separate worlds,” said the record-keeping lady. “There were exceptions. But we were as far apart as Democrats and Republicans.
“Nothing has changed in my opinion, including the outcome, which I believe is inevitable,” she said.
Park owner Roy Matsuoka “refuses to make any improvements,” she says. “He reasons that it is silly to put money in when things are going to change soon enough. I agree with him.
“He wants senior apartments put in here. He said it all along at our meetings last year. He said it’s just a matter of time. We should face it. But some people are not realistic.
“Roy says the park can’t continue to exist (a) because of its age and infrastructure, and (b) because we are sitting out here as an anomaly on a block that is dramatically changing.
“The park cannot continue to exist.”
And then there is the park tenant who is so angry with his immediate neighbor over alleged late-night noisemaking that he has posted his feelings on the park bulletin board.
In his five-paragraph letter addressed to Mr. Matsuoka, he has a very personal stream of bleeding steam to spew. He pleads for Mr. Matsuoka, in this, his second letter, to take action against his adversary.
Depends on Who Is Talking
Whether the nearly two dozen homeowners are better off or worse off since the Agency rejected their plea to be included in a specific redevelopment plan seems to vary as much as the park’s disparate personalities.
Several residents said that not one drop of sentiment has changed since October. If anything, positions have hardened. “The bad feelings have not gone away,” one man said. “Funny thing is, there’s nothing to fight over anymore.”
The minority that wanted to be excluded from the city’s redevelopment strategy is convinced they will be able to remain in their homes until they die.
The majority believe that the end of the park is much closer than the ends of their lives.
Next door to the aging park, like an outsized text message, looms the latest attempt to build Grandview Palms, an assisted living facility.
Handsome but incomplete.
The ground on which it is being built is also owned by Mr. Matsuoka, whose family has owned the mobile home park for decades.
Grandview Palms has missed several previously announced completion deadlines, the latest being January.
Residents say that as long as Mr. Matsuoka’s attention is distracted by the slow progress of Grandview Palms, the less time he has to be occupied by the encroaching reality of how to dispense with 4071.
The delay works to their advantage, residents say, but only temporarily. Whether Grandview Palms is finished or stalled, reportedly for certain building materials, Mr. Matsuoka soon will decide to put greatly upgraded senior housing on the 4071 property.
Residents Diverge at Voting Time
Sixteen months after City Hall ignited an uproar among the largely senior, low-income residents by announcing a pending displacement to accommodate redevelopment, the residents changed their minds.
Voting at the request of the Redevelopment Agency, which had no idea of whether residents were for or against inclusion, sixty percent chose to be included in City Hall’s redevelopment scheme. They said they thought it would be to the financial and psychological benefit of all, especially the frail, to insure a more orderly relocation.
However, Mayor Albert Vera, Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger and Agency member Carol Gross rejected their preference. By the slenderest majority, they voted, essentially, to make every homeowner a free agent. By those terms, each resident was obligated to negotiate his own terms.
The outcome was surprising, and keenly disappointing to many. Throughout the controversy, Mr. Silbiger had been depicted as perhaps the park’s only hero at City Hall. When he voted against the majority wishes, majority members said they felt let down.
The Individual Relationships
Meanwhile, back at 4071 yesterday, a neighbor told a visitor that a man she formerly was friendly with — before he took the other side, “the wrong side,” in the dispute with the Redevelopment Agency — finally was coaxed into greeting her the other morning. She felt a little triumphant.
But not nearly as all-conquering as Mr. Mullins.
An adapted craftsman who has turned to working with his hands since moving from Northern California, he is as brash and garrulous as he ever has been throughout this nearly two-year running drama.
Resplendent yesterday in his favorite electric orange sweatshirt and color-free sweatpants, the stocky Mr. Mullins, bearing a black trash bag, shuffled toward the center of the park. A paved area shared by the dumpster and the row of mailboxes is a popular gathering place.
In his late fifties, Mr. Mullins is trying to rebound from a couple of personal setbacks.
From the opposite direction, approaching even more deliberately, was the always colorfully attired Ms. Betty. Leaning heavily on her cane, to support her eighty-five years of wisdom and optimism, she is the most recognizable of the park’s twenty-three homeowners and close to the most outspoken. It’s a horse race between her and Mr. Mullins.
Ms. Betty explains that when she was a young girl, back during the Great Depression, a stylist at the old J.W. Robinson Department Store taught her how to color coordinate her wardrobe. It is embedded in the clearest corner of her memory.
At an age when many women take a pass on fashion, Ms. Betty carefully matches tops, bottoms and outer wear before daring to venture outdoors.
Her path intersects with Mr. Mullins in front of the mailboxes. Together, they could pleasantly light up the Hollywood Bowl.
Mr. Mullins, a flamboyant observer of the park’s political pulse, barely can restrain himself from sharing his news.
“I am working for Gary Silbiger’s re-election,” he announces, boldly and proudly.
Switching subjects swiftly, he glances toward a clear blue sky. In a grandiloquent gesture, he raises his beefy arm in a sweeping motion, linking ethereal forces with the park. “This,” Mr. Mullins says, “is sacred ground.”
Smiling energetically, Ms. Betty nods concurrence.
One of the most familiar daily sights in the park is when Ms. Betty crouches down, surely with some discomfort, to pull weeds.
“Ever since (the city) called us blighted,” she says, with determination, “it has been important to keep the grounds beautiful.”
Returning to the main subject, she said that “anyone who tries to throw me out of my home is going to have a battle. I am not leaving.”
Perhaps the most religious of the park’s residents, “faith is everything,” Ms. Betty said. “Faith can change the course of events. Faith can make possible things that other people never thought could happen.”
