Daily Business Review 08/16/05

Sometimes It's The Mayor Who Lives In The mobile Home Park.

From today's Daily Business Review:

Pembroke Park Mayor John Lyons fears his mobile home of 23 years is an endangered species.

Lyons knows mobile home parks are catnip to land-hungry developers, but he also knows that mobile homes are often the most affordable homes that anyone can find in increasingly pricey Broward County.

The Pembroke Park Town Commission recently approved a resolution calling on elected officials to demonstrate their support for affordable housing by strengthening protections for mobile home parks. But the resolution is vague.

The Broward County Commission will formally acknowledge the resolution at its meeting today, but it is uncertain whether the idea will prompt any discussion.

“Elected officials have to take the bull by the horns for mobile homes,” Lyons said. “If mobile home parks were zoned properly, developers would have to go to court to rezone them.”

In Pembroke Park, the town’s 2,257 mobile homes far outnumber the 755 single-family homes and 1,390 multifamily units, according to the University of Florida’s Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse.

Of the town’s 6,580 residents, about 4,000 live in 12 mobile home parks, Lyons said. The town’s T-1 zoning specifically is for mobile home communities.

“Every day, developers are trying to buy mobile home parks in town,” Lyons said. “Everyone talks about the need for more affordable housing and, the next day, a mobile home park is sold and 150 people are out on the street who can’t afford housing.”

Developer Michael Wohl of the Pinnacle Group said that state law ensures that won’t happen.

“The state, through extensive statutes governing mobile home parks, has assumed the responsibility and jurisdiction for them,” said Wohl, who has acquired two mobile home parks in Hollywood in preparation for a multifamily and transit-oriented project.

He declined to discuss the relocation of the park residents, saying that it’s still two years away.

“I don’t think local municipalities can legally usurp a state statute,” he said.

Not alone

But the town’s resolution raises other questions that aren’t easily answered.

The land under mobile home parks generally is privately owned. Any added protection for residents could put a dent in the property rights of park owners.

And many mobile homes were built decades before the 1994 construction code for manufactured housing was adopted in response to Hurricane Andrew’s flattening of mobile homes in its path. Protecting older mobile homes from acquisition and demolition could endanger both lives and property.

In Davie, where an estimated 20,000 of the town’s 29,928 residents live in mobile homes, the safety questions loom large.

“The majority of mobile homes here were built before the new code,” said Shirley Taylor-Prakelt, the town’s housing and community development director. “That’s a grave concern for me.”

When Mayor Tom Truex asked how the town would have fared if Hurricane Charley had struck Davie instead of Punta Gorda last year, she said, “I told him we would have made Punta Gorda look like a cakewalk.”

The town has increased efforts to educate mobile home residents about using stronger anchoring to help protect manufactured housing during storms.

But Taylor-Prakelt is equally concerned about displacing mobile home residents.

Last month Goshen Properties became the first developer to purchase a mobile home park in Davie.

Before the town can rezone Goshen’s newly acquired Ponderosa Park for a proposed townhouse project, state law requires the developer to prove there is comparable replacement housing for park residents.

State law also requires that a relocation fund help move a mobile home within 50 miles or to pay $3,000 for a single-wide or $6,000 for a double-wide home, whichever is less. The amount includes the cost of dismantling, moving and setting up the mobile home somewhere else.

“It will be very difficult to find that housing,” Taylor-Prakelt said.

A Goshen representative could not be reached for comment.

Still, Truex supports the notion of Pembroke Park’s resolution.

“We haven’t discussed a specific proclamation but, generally, we’re supportive of the idea,” he said. “Mobile homes get a bad rap, but they’re more affordable than other types of housing.”

‘Statutory tool’

At least two Florida housing conferences this fall will target affordability concerns and possible solutions.

The preservation of mobile home parks will be addressed next month at the annual conference of the Florida Housing Coalition in Orlando.

Coalition member and attorney Jaimie Ross, affordable housing director of 1000 Friends of Florida in Tallahassee, said one solution that should be discussed is the acquisition of mobile home parks by land trusts.

A trust could pay park owners for their land and allow residents to stay, she said.

“The statutory tool for protecting these residents is in place, but unfortunately too many local governments have been ignoring it,” Ross said in an e-mail, referring to the relocation provisions in state law.

Broward County Mayor Kristen Jacobs is considering another option — having the county and cities acquire the communities and build new affordable homes.

“They wouldn’t be mobile homes, but they’d be attainable,” she said. “That’s a good direction for us to go in. I’m not too sure about fighting to maintain older, unsafe mobile homes as a solution to affordable housing.”

In New England states where mobile homes are plentiful, dedicated private loans through nonprofit community development organizations are used to upgrade mobile homes to current codes, said economic development consultant Jim Carras in Fort Lauderdale, an urban planning professor at Florida Atlantic University.

Carras is the spokesman for the Affordable Housing Summit in October in Fort Lauderdale.

Private funds also could help mobile home communities become cooperatives that take more control of their parks, he said.

“You have to look at each park and plan for the future,” Carras said. “Mobile home owners organize themselves too late.”

That makes them vulnerable to an even bigger problem, said state Rep. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood.

“The real issue is whether we are creating a situation where people are going to be homeless,” she said. “We don’t want more homeless people.” [end]

Editor's note: What's scary is they want to close the mobile home parks first, then build the "affordable housing" we can aspire to.

For those who can't figure out how to do things right. Build a nice affordable housing complex. Offer those who want to move (from the mobile home park you want to close) into the new housing, the same rent or mortgage payment they currently play for their lot. Close the park and build more affordable housing on that land. Repeat as necessary until all hurricane unsafe housing is eliminated.