Shara

We live in a park on Bethel Island. In the rural areas of Contra Costa County there is rent control for mobilehome owners. My in-laws bought their mobilehome in this park approx 13 years ago. 10 years ago the property was bought by a couple who's dreams were to turn the 15 acre park into a premier Delta family resort. Our new "slumlord" was a very pompous, rude discriminatory a****le. They courted a tremendous group of private investors whose investment money was supposed to be used for improvements, expansion and initial costs to buy their very own franchise. The Dream crashed and burned as they were denied entrance into the elite world of the theme park royalty. The money was spent on a luxury houseboat, a bigger personal plane that flew them all over living the highlife. At the great expense of the Mobilehome/RV Park's residents. Reduction of services w/o rent reduction. We lost allowed access to the showerrooms and restrooms. Denied further use of the launch ramp, dock berthing or fishing. We were even harassed about a boat pulling up to the dock to offload paying patrons headed to the restaurant/bar for the evening. There have always been ongoing county code violation actions that were never completely resolved. After 9 years our landlords fell into default and started a tedious drawnout foreclosure against them. They continued to collect rents and late fees, belittle, harass and threaten their renters. As well as spread lies to discredit someone as punishment for daring to question management. We had about a week of gossip and then the next day "they" were gone. Renters felt abandoned by the foreclosed upon landlords, but also an immense relief that the drunken tyranny was over. Since then we were threatened by county code enforcers that the power would be shut off in 48 hours. A tenant got in contact with the realtor and somehow she got the power to remain on a little longer. The bank agreed to the county that they would fix violations in exchange for the county allowing the power to remain on. The bank received estimates for the required repair needed and decided to refuse the offer because they were not going to spend the 100,000.00 quoted and broke the promise of taking care of the remaining tenants until a new owner arrived. PG&E was shut off with no notice. Which in turn meant no more water as the well was dependent on the power to run well pumps. No power also means the ailing sewer system that had been manually pumped out every night was no longer possible. We were told to by county to get ourselves generators. Which everyone has, but that does not get us water. At present we are harassed by strangers and law enforcement that we are illegal squatters on private land that now had no trespassing signs posted. My inlaws have paid more than $115,000 in rent, during this time period, for this honor
Our mobilehome is too old to move elsewhere, it would be too old for new park leases. This meant that my in-laws investment was bust. My father-in-law died of cancer in June 2006. My mother-in-law was so stressed of not knowing what was happening or when it would happen. Had a sudden heart attack at 63 and died in February this year. So doubles the anguish of abandonment. We live ever day wondering at the next action by either side to further attempt "to break us" or "intimidate us" into moving out. They say we no longer have any rights because we no longer pay anyone rent. However, we have a bank account in which all the collective rents for each and every month since 12/1/08 account for the deposited balance. So this is where it stands still today, waiting with anxiety of the unknown future. Will we be allowed to continue renting here until new owners can issue us rental agreements or will it be like all the actions, no notice, no time to prepare, only chaos and confusion and anger at being treated as if I was doing something wrong by trying to keep my family in a stable safe environment. Which by the way is quite a challenge to adjust to the loss of some of the comforts we take for granted most of our lives.