Tony and Patricia Robinson visit the site of their former mobile home in the Coddington Mobile Estates in Santa Rosa. The couple lost their home in the October wildfires and are frustrated with how long it is taking to clear and prepare the lot for their new home. (photo by John Burgess/The Press Democrat)
Written by Robert Digitale
The Press Democrat | June 29, 2018
Like other fire survivors, Tony and Patricia Robinson hope a new home will help them put their lives back together.
The Robinsons lost one of 11 mobile homes that burned last fall at Coddingtown Mobile Estates on Piner Road. And like survivors at two other Santa Rosa mobile home parks similarly hit by wildfires, they expressed frustration at how little control they have in expediting their park’s rebuild.
The couple wrote a check for a new mobile home in April but had the manufacturer delay construction until late this month because they didn’t have a place to put it.
“We’re kind of waiting in limbo,” said Tony Robinson, a computer repair technician who lived at the mobile home park for more than a decade.
Some residents of the 117-unit Coddingtown park said the Roseville-based management company, Waterhouse Management Corp., has done a poor job in rebuilding the park and giving residents information they can count on.
“This thing has been going on too long,” said Dan Kanights, president of the homeowners’ association. Neighbors helped him save his home, which sits across the street from those that burned.
Besides the delays in rebuilding the 11 lots, he said the remaining residents demanded this winter a third of their rent be refunded for the month of October. They argued their homes were uninhabitable and without power for at least 10 days after the fire.
That demand, put in a Feb. 16 letter from an attorney with Legal Aid of Sonoma County, has gone unanswered, Kanights said.
Meanwhile, those whose homes burned aren’t paying rent.
Robert Kenner, a Waterhouse property manager in Roseville, said the company soon will begin the site preparation and utility work so new mobile homes can be brought in on the burned ground. He maintained he was unaware of the demand for a rent refund but expected the topic will come up at a July meeting planned with the residents.
“Whatever we can do, we’re going to take care of them,” Kenner said.
Three mobile home parks in the city partially burned during the fall wildfires, which claimed 24 lives and burned nearly 5,300 homes in Sonoma County. Together, the North Bay wildfires were the most devastating in state history.
The residents of the three mobile home parks now face different fates.
Owners of the Journey’s End mobile home park on Mendocino Avenue announced in February they’re not reopening the 13.5-acre site, where the Tubbs fire destroyed nearly three quarters of the 160 mobile homes there. The announcement left an uncertain future both for those residents who lost homes and those whose coaches remained standing but were without utilities and deemed uninhabitable.
At the 223-unit Orchard mobile home park off Pinercrest Drive, a group of residents in May filed a lawsuit against Hometown America, the Chicago-based park owner. Residents expressed frustration that the rebuild was taking too long.
Since then, five new homes have been set up at the Orchard, where nearly 70 homes burned, Deborah Collins, one of the residents who filed suit, said Friday.
At the Coddingtown park, residents complained announced deadlines for debris cleanup, new utilities and lot preparations keep getting pushed back.
