Deadline looms for mobile home residents as officials debate who’s responsible for rail trail encroachment

County officials say they are still trying to determine who is responsible for homes and other structures in two Live Oak mobile home parks that are encroaching on the future site of a section of the Coastal Rail Trail, with a report on the issue expected to come by April. 

An analyst from District 1 County Supervisor Manu Koenig’s office told a meeting of the Santa Cruz County Mobile and Manufactured Home Commission on Thursday that the supervisor’s office has asked the Regional Transportation Commission to work with the owners and managers of the two parks to determine who is liable for the encroachments. 

“Given that the park rules require a park owner to sign off on all placement of private property, there could be a case that the park owners would be responsible,” said analyst Jamie Sehorn.

The commission chair, Jean Brocklebank, said she met with RTC executive director Sarah Christensen in December in hopes that the commission would determine that financial responsibility lies with “the park owner, and not its tenants, who just rent the space that their home sits on.” 

The Coastal Rail Trail project has been an ongoing source of disagreement in Santa Cruz County. The project has been particularly contentious among residents in Blue and Gold Star Mobile Home Park and Castle Mobile Home Estates in Live Oak, which sit on opposite sides of the rail corridor off 38th Avenue. 

Last January, park residents received notices from the RTC notice saying the organization had completed a boundary survey and found that some of the homes within the parks sit on property owned by the agency. The RTC gave residents until June 2025 to move structures that encroach on the agency’s property, warning that if they didn’t do so, the commission would, and charge the encroaching party for the cost. Sehorn said the RTC issued a June 2025 deadline despite the project’s expected 2026 groundbreaking to allow time for any legal challenges on issues such as the encroachments.

Residents of the parks have mulled legal action. Meanwhile, the RTC has maintained that it is not required to provide financial compensation or assistance to address the encroachments, which range from a fence or a yard to substantial chunks of some of the mobile homes.

However, the question of who is the “encroaching party” — the parks’ owners or residents — remains unclear. Sehorn told Thursday’s meeting that the RTC still has not determined who is responsible.

Management for Castle Mobile Home Estates previously told Lookout that neither its owner, Millennium Housing, nor the tenants should have to pay for relocation, as the mobile home park was there long before the RTC purchased the rail line and the rail line’s previous owner, Union Pacific Railroad, never raised an issue. Blue and Gold Star Mobile Home Park’s management did not return Lookout’s request for comment, and its residents previously told Lookout that it had remained mostly silent on the issue.

Sehorn added that the RTC has told Koenig’s office that a final report determining who is responsible for paying for any work done to remedy the encroachments is expected by April.

She added that the RTC has said it will work with the state to grant variances to residents — which allow a property owner to use their land in a way that is not permitted by the existing zoning rules. She said that Koenig’s office and state Sen. John Laird’s office are willing to support requests for variances, too. If granted, the variances could reduce some of the disruption to an affected tenant’s property.

Brocklebank, however, added that variances also cost money. “A variance requires a permit, and a permit costs money. You don’t just ask for one,” she said. “I think any financial obligations should be wholly paid for by the park owner.”

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