Mobile home sweet what? Part 2
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
What does a mobile home owner do when the land is sold out from under her?
Yes, the mobile home owner who bought his box while renting his land took a risk that in hindsight seems silly, but the whole industry was configured this way. When an entire industry is premised on leased land, those who sell homes have, I think, associated themselves with the marketplace’s undertaking to preserve that land lease.
Government action to prevent ground-lease eviction
The detrimental reliance argument has found its greatest weight in century-long ground leases, such as downtown Honolulu, where the Bishop Estate (now Kamehameha Schools) owned most of the footprints atop which towering high-rise condos has been built and sold.
In a series of laws and decisions (1967, 1984, and 1991), the
Beyond the policy arguments, the political case is compelling:
Some residents say they need more help. “There’s over 4,000 mobile home parks in the state of
Probably for a very practical reason: the law of economic gravity. A mobile-home park use is a low-density, low-value use. (From the air it looks high-density, but it’s all single-story.)
Sooner or later a higher-density higher-value opportunity will arise, and then the market will clear.
Bruce Savage, spokesman for the Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade group, says park owners understand residents’ concerns. “We try to encourage state programs that will assist homeowners with relocation,” Savage says, “but at the same time, we fully understand the private property rights of these owners, too. … It’s a real dilemma.”
Where voters lead, politicians follow, and when the government factory goes into production, it first cranks out laws.
Bringing space-age legislation to
It should come as no surprise that one of the landmark regulatory-taking decisions, Yee v City of Escondido, dealt with a city ordinance prohibiting mobile home land owners from jacking the ground rents. When moratoria fail, there are always incentives:
Personal experience drove Oregon state Rep. Jerry Krummel to introduce legislation that offers a tax credit to displaced mobile home residents. Krummel lived in a trailer for 12 years when he couldn’t afford a standard home.
“I want to make sure there’s some kind of protection for them,” he says.
Protections, if any, are state not Federal. As a 1996 survey article comments:
Seeing a clear need, by 1991, 32 states had enacted protective laws applying specifically to park residents. Even where state statutes do exist, their provisions vary widely. Only 18 of the 32 statutes require written leases and disclosure of all park fees, for example. Twenty require owners to give residents some notice of a change in land use, although simple notice usually does not give a homeowner organization — even where one exists — enough time to make a counteroffer. Only six states give residents a right of first refusal to purchase their parks, and only two require the owner to accept a buy-out at fair market price.48
Some states reject even that premise:
Manufactured Housing Communities of Washington v. Washington, 2000 WL 1678419 (Wash. 2000) (state law granting mobile home tenants a right of first refusal is unconstitutional because it takes property for a private use by forcing a transfer from the landlord to the tenant against the landlord’s will; public use interpreted literally to mean public use rather than public purpose).
When it can, government uses the full array of fiscal resources:
In
A state motto incompatible with eviction.
Ownership is security of tenure, and that has a value beyond rubies. The logical solution is resident buyouts:
Since 1984, 73 mobile home parks in
Perched alongside Sandy Hook Bay with views of the
Adjacent marina, beachfront property — ripe for development.
Homeowners say they received letters informing them of the sale. Loretta Dibble, president of the homeowners association, says that under
Loretta Dibble stands outside her mobile home in
“We have residents who’ve been here for 40 years,” says Dibble, 49, a graduate student [At forty-nine? — Ed.] who has lived in the park for nearly three years. “We’re ultimately trying to challenge the sale of the park, purchase the park and run it.”
The homeowners also are fighting a proposed rezoning of the park and marina that would allow the building of town houses and businesses.
In urban property, economics, law, and politics often intersect. If you bought your property based on a current zoning, and a successor land purchaser seeks a rezoning, you can be expected vociferously to object.
Jim Bollerman, who bought the park and marina, says he has no plans for the park.
He doesn’t need to. Zoning is destiny.
“Our focus at this point is on the marina,” Bollerman says. “Any consideration with regard to the mobile home park will take place after the improvements to the marina.”
The people of
Regardless of circumstances, eviction is always traumatic.
The cluster of 53 mobile homes is a tight-knit enclave within
Newcomers have been given one-year leases, rather than the standard five- and 10-year leases.
Doubtless the developer would describe that as ‘prudently keeping our options open.’ But as it opens the developers’ options, it closes the residents’, whose fate is in suspense:
HIGHLANDS — Borough officials have postponed a public hearing on a controversial ordinance that would rezone a Locust Street mobile home park, marina and surrounding land near Sandy Hook Bay.
The measure, which some have said will encourage a developer to force Paradise Park mobile home park residents off their land, is tentatively set to be reviewed by the Planning Board at its May 11 meeting. A hearing on the ordinance by the Borough Council will be June 7.
Mayor Richard O’Neil stressed he found out late in the day Wednesday, the date of the original hearing, about the need to send the proposal back to planners for further review.
