She's not the only one. Her new neighbors, Nelson and Renee Fields, spent $20,000 in the last two years to extend utilities, drill a well and build a septic system for their mobile home. The hardship and expense were the price, they say, for the harmony of this special spot in the southwest part of the county, where an easy living can be had on a shoestring budget.
But harmony is hardly the mood around 143rd Avenue these days. Instead, Laura Slade and the Fieldses and a half-dozen others are feeling the wrath of a local real estate agent and upscale neighbors, who are hell-bent on throwing them and their mobile homes off the land. The home-and-garden people who live in lavish houses on the other side of the mountain have teamed up with Maricopa County officials to get rid of this "eyesore."
County officials say even though these folks own their property, they have no right to live on it in mobile homes. The only way to get the county and the complainants off their backs, is to build single-family homes--a financial burden that's out of the question, to say nothing about how this rankles their idea of freedom.
But none of those arguments has moved either the complainants, who say they're trying to protect property values, or the bureaucrats, who say they are "just following the law."
The law in this case seems to be on both sides. There's the "farm exemption" law that Slade and her neighbors got when they settled here in the first place. County officials used to sign those exemptions almost routinely, saying it was perfectly okay for these people to move a mobile home onto their property. The Fieldses, for instance, got their approval in October of 1988, then got the county's approval for all their improvements. Exactly a year later, they were notified they had only two weeks to move the mobile home because of a new policy on farm exemptions. That policy says mobile homes are not okay unless the owners derive two thirds of their income from agriculture. The two horses the Fieldses keep on their land apparently don't count. And Slade never has made any of her income on her homestead. She puts meat on the table by hawking old jewelry and Indian trinkets at swap meets and garage sales. She doesn't make much money, but, as she says, she doesn't eat much either.
The fight started when the single-family-home neighbors started filling the files in the county's planning office with complaints that Slade and her friends had both junk and "illegal mobile homes" on their property. The planners agreed, citing the new policy, and turned the cases over to the County Attorney's Office, demanding these people be prosecuted unless they move the mobile homes. The whole scenario mystifies the mobile-home people, who say they just want to be left alone and can't understand the county's change of mind. And when they recently discovered they're the only ones in the county being prosecuted for this "offense," they got mad.
"They're hurting us," Laura Slade says. "If they have their way, we'd all be homeless."
One of her neighbors is more blunt: "Do we have to take this kind of harasssment just because they don't like the way we live," asks Odean Willand.
JOEL AND PEGGY LATHAM spent considerable time compiling their complaints about the mobile-home community three miles and over the mountain from their posh home. They took photos, looked up records, studied the law and eventually lodged twelve separate complaints to zoning officials.
The Lathams built their quasi-subterranean dream home a few years back. It was written up in the local weekly as a unique piece of desert architecture. They say they were well-aware that the mobile homes were there when they started to build, but thought they were just temporary. When they discovered people planned to live there permanently, they began organizing their complaint files.
Joel Latham, 31, who works for a local defense industry contractor, admits he and his wife can't see the mobile homes from their own yard, but notice them on their weekend hikes through the Estrella Mountains. "We see them. And it's very disruptive to the park," he says.
Is this the elitist attitude of an upper-middle-class family? Not at all, Latham retorts: "We've got to protect ourselves against people that don't respect any kind of rules and regulations." The way Latham sees the future of his area is that it is filled with new shiny houses, paved roads, schools, city water and sewer systems--all the amenities of downtown Phoenix. He supported an effort to get the area annexed to the city of Goodyear. He thinks the bumpkins who want the area to remain a rural area with dirt roads and minimal citylike intrusion are not very far-sighted. The issue is growth. Phoenix is moving out toward the area and citizens should prepare for the urban sprawl. The area will be a blighted mobile-home village if these people are allowed to have their way, he says. That would depress property values.
The Lathams aren't the only homeowners who have complained. For a long time, the loudest voice came from a Goodyear real estate agent named Frank Billingsley, who's been dubbed "The Mayor" by some of the mobile-home owners who wish he'd mind his own business. Billingsley lives about three miles east over a couple of hills in a palatial fifty-acre ranch.
In the past, he's complained to individual mobile-home owners about their homes, junk and construction material strewn around their land. He even orchestrated a campaign to rid mobile homes from the area. But the Air Force veteran now says he's had a change of heart. Billingsley says he'd prefer everyone stop complaining and go home.
The change may be partially explained because Billingsley himself recently was cited for having a mobile home and junk on his own property. In addition, the Lathams are under investigation by the county for building their home on a hill in violation of the county's hillside ordinance. The mobile-home owners admit they're the ones who turned Billingsley and the Lathams in. Tit for tat, they call it.
BOB BRITTAIN, the county's principal planner, admits the old farm exemption was pretty easy to get a few years ago. "Just about anyone met the requirements," he says. Not so under the new rules, when you have to prove the bulk of your income is coming from the land in order to place a mobile home on the property.
Brittain says he's hearing it from all sides. He says single-family homeowners complain they can't sell $150,000 homes because someone across the street has a mobile home. "They yell at us. `How did you let that shack be built below me?'" On the other side of the coin, some mobile-home owners have a legal right to be there. And of course, there's the matter of the county approving these mobile homes in the first place. But Brittain claims the county's role is clear.
"We have to take them to court. We've got complaints from citizens," he says. "That's what we're here for . . . We're not the judge and jury in these things. We just gather the evidence."
Already the evidence has found Al Field (no relation to Nelson and Renee Fields) guilty and responsible for a $274 fine for having an illegal mobile home on his land. The 76-year-old Field is an original homesteader in this area. The judgment on Field hasn't dissuaded semiretired lawyer Art McBrayer, who has vowed a fight to the end. McBrayer is set to go to trial against the county in Buckeye Justice Court within the next month. He's trying to enlist the support of heavyweights from the mobile-home association. State president Gail "Gub" Mix, says he's considering a federal lawsuit to stop the county from harassing the mobile-home owners. Mix says his association beat Salt Lake County's persecution of mobile homes in a similar case in Utah. Surprisingly, the only two regular homeowners within sight of the mobile homes like their neighbors and don't mind their presence. Al Lentz, a contractor, supports them. He moved to the area for peace, quiet and freedom.
"They don't bother me. I don't bother them," he said. The other neighbor is more pointed. "We moved out here to get away from the Peggy Lathams of the world," says Mike Boone. Neither the complainants nor the county know what to do with the mobile homers if they end up on the street. It is not part of their job, they say.
But, Laura Slade does. "I'll go back to living in the dirt if they make me."
THE FAT CATS HAVE A FIELD DAY... v5-30-90
