AG goes after mobile home park

MESA — Operators for a mobile home park broke housing and civil rights laws when they booted an old couple without taking the wife’s mental disorder into consideration, according to a recent lawsuit.

The complaint from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office claims Mesa Village Mobile Home Park near Main Street and Lindsey Road and two of its previous tenants, Herb and Ella Loy Boyd. The state is suing the park on their behalf.

According to the complaint, the Boyds started renting a unit in the park in May 2001. Ella Boyd has a mental impairment that does not allow her to care for herself.

On March 23, she stopped taking her medication, according to the complaint. When the neighbors placed concrete dividers between their driveway and the Boyds’ driveway, she became angry and complained to the manager. The discussion ended in an argument, with Mesa Police removing Ella Boyd from the premises.

On march 25, the complaint says, she was admitted to a treatment facility for psychiatric evaluation. That day, the mobile home park terminated the couple’s lease because she had been “observd attempting to break into the home of another tenant…[and] threatened the manager with physical harm.”

Doctors determined that Ella Boyd was bipolar, and Herb Boyd used this in court to get the park to drop the case and let them move back in. Lawyers for the state claim negotiations with the park’s lawyers broke down, and that the park refused to make reasonable accomodations for the Boyds.

Thus the lawsuit. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard is suing under the Arizona Fair Housing Act and the Arizona Civil Rights Act. Tucson lawyers Rose A. Daly-Rooney and Cathleen Dooley are representing the state.