Mobile home park inspections deferred to state

BARSTOW — After losing money, San Bernardino County will stop inspecting mobile home parks in the vast county and allow local governments to decide who takes up the program.

With the county bowing out, due to the cost of completing the inspections compared to the low fees set by the state, the Barstow City Council in a unanimous vote decided on Monday to decline the responsibility for the inspections and defer it to the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

For nearly 25 years, the county has checked utilities and handled permits for mobile home parks as part of a state law but will stop the services at the end of July, said Dan Avera, chief of the county’s environmental health department. He said labor costs and the cost of gas contributed to the decision.

“It just doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s a resource issue.”

Speaking at the Monday meeting, Bob Cooper, the city’s building official, said that in order to take over the inspection program, the city would have to hire one and half new employees to handle the inspections and field complaint calls. He did not think the city could recover the costs of the program.

In addition to checking on the gas, water and electric in parks, the county inspections also followed up on complaints from neighbors about overgrown trees and landscaping and sanitation. The county also collected fees for new mobile homes, additions and construction. If someone added an awning to a mobile home in Needles, an inspector from Avera’s Victorville office would have to make the two-and-a-half hour drive to inspect it.

“We might get $120 from it,” Avera said.

Dropping the mobile home inspection program from the county agency’s responsibility will free up more staff to concentrate and environmental and public health in the county, Avera said. He said the county Board of Supervisors will consider giving authority over inspections of mobile home parks in county areas to the state later this month.

Both Avera and the state department of Housing and Community Development did not foresee significant changes when control of the inspections switch. Ron Javor, the assistant department director of the division of codes and standards in the Department of Housing and Community Development, said once the county and local governments in San Bernardino decide who will take over the inspections, they will move staff into the area. He imagines assigning one or two inspectors to the High Desert region. Already, six High Desert cities use the state for inspections, including Adelanto.

“We’re going to try to do at least as good a job if not a better job than the county,” Javor said.

Javor said the state will not change the fees but will be able to sustain the program. He said the state uses specially trained inspectors that can respond quickly and that with enforcement heading to the state level, some permitting processes will be streamlined.

Carol Watson, the resident manager at the Sunrise Pass Estates mobile home park, said she does not want the switch to change the availability of inspectors in the area to permit new mobile homes. The county had set days they were available in Barstow and Watson hopes the state follows that practice.

By the numbers

Barstow has 12 mobile home parks which include 1,186 lots. When the city designated the county as the lead inspecting agency in 1983, there were approximately 750 lots.

During the fiscal year 2006-2007, the county received 4 complaints from the parks. The county received 8 complaints during the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

Source: The City of Barstow

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