Here’s the bottom line: It’s the landlord’s responsibility to
make the trailer park a safe and healthy place for tenants and the
community
It’s about time. Thomas Velladao, the Marin lawyer who owns the trailer park that’s been the site of numerous sewage spills, says he plans major fixes to the ramshackle property’s sewer system.
But he wants everyone to know that the long-overdue repairs aren’t in response to state housing officials’ recent threat to close the trailer park at the corner of Monterey Road and Luchessa Avenue.
Velladao wrote a letter to the editor in which he described himself as a “conscientious landlord for over 10 years.”
Let’s remember that the trailer park’s ongoing sewage problems threaten not only the health of Velladao’s tenants, but also the health of the entire community.
A conscientious landlord would hire the first available, qualified contractor to complete repairs; Velladao decided to seek bids.
A conscientious landlord would have found a long-term solution to these serious problems long before concerned residents had to resort to complaining to state officials and The Dispatch.
We applaud those residents, including former resident Martha Ybarra, who made the brave and risky decision to report the appalling conditions. The residents of the trailer park have few financial resources but blew the whistle on the park’s health and safety issues anyway.
Those complaints resulted in state officials citing the park for 38 violations. State officials followed up with a June 1 letter promising closure of the park if Velladao didn’t find a long-term fix for the park’s sewer system.
Any landlord has a responsibility to provide a habitable rental property for his tenants. If a property doesn’t meet that minimal standard – habitable – any landlord has a responsibility to get a rental property up to that standard as quickly as possible.
The story of the Velladao Mobile Home Park’s sewage and safety problems broke in March. The conditions at the park were so appalling that The Dispatch editorial board took the very unusual step of publishing a front-page editorial.
It’s June, and Velladao is promising to install new sewage lines or provide for routine pressurized blowouts of the existing lines “within the next two to three weeks.”
We’re watching and waiting, as are the residents of the trailer park and state officials.
It’s really not material why Thomas Velladao finally decided to implement a long-term fix to the chronic sewer problems at his titular trailer park. The end result is what’s important: The park’s residents and the Gilroy community all need Velladao Mobile Home Park to be reliably habitable.
