Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Previous blog posts on Paradise Park may be found in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5]

Halfway through Tom Stoppard’s meta-delightful The Real Inspector Hound, the two heckling drama critics in the front row (Moon and Birdboot) find themselves being accosted by some of the characters onstage, as the ‘fourth wall’ between audience and actors breaks down.

 

“You haven’t … stolen anything, have you?”

 

That slightly unnerving feeling overtook me last week when I was interviewed by enterprising local journalist Matt Lynch of the Two Rivers Times:

David A. Smith, a Harvard graduate [Always knew the sheepskin would be handy one day — Ed.] and the founder of the Affordable Housing Institute has periodically written on Paradise Park in his blog www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us. Smith has provided analysis to Congress and is also the president of a Boston-based firm that works to preserve existing affordable housing through “innovative financial transactions.” In a telephone interview from his office in Boston, Smith said Tuesday that he first learned of the developments with the MXD through an article in USA Today last spring. Smith said that he has no ties to either side of the debate.

“What we have here is not a land use argument,” Smith suggested. “What we have here is a dispute about money.”

To understand why this isn’t about the future of Paradise Park, but appears now purely to be a money fight —

 

Whoever grabs the other’s wallet first, wins

— let’s go back to last summer, when Paradise Park’s mobile home owners first surfaced as being in jeopardy of being uprooted.

 

“I thought I had security of tenure”

Paradise Park consists of 58 mobile home units over 3.7 bay front acres. Paradise Park was purchased by James Bollerman, the founder of Bollerman Companies a Red Bank-based full service real estate company, in 2004 for $2.4 million. He purchased the adjacent marina in 2003.

Thus, Mr. Bollerman first bought the marina, then bought the adjacent mobile home park, whose value would increase substantially if it could be redeveloped into a marina, if it could be rezoned for such:

Bollerman sits on the board of directors for the Highlands Business Partnership and was recently appointed to the local committee representing the borough in the Bayshore Regional Strategic Plan.

A useful perch to participate in securing a rezoning of property about which one particularly cares. As I wrote last May:

Uprooted? Don’t they own their homes?

 

It is a scene that’s being played out across the country. Like those in Paradise Park, many mobile home residents own their trailers but rent the land beneath them, leaving them vulnerable to developers who are increasingly converting parks into condominiums and malls.

The residents were and are vulnerable because the faint whiff of abutter condescension hangs over the typical mobile home park:

[Mobile homes] are the ‘dark matter’ of American affordable housing’s universe, a huge ecomass whose presence is barely noticed, and then often with disdain.

 

No mobile homes in my litter box, please

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 New Hampshire have switched from rentals to resident-owned, says Paul Bradley, vice president of the loan fund.

Paradise Park residents would like to follow in those footsteps.

 

Perched alongside Sandy Hook Bay with views of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the park was sold in 2005 to a developer who also had bought an adjacent marina.

 

Adjacent marina, beachfront property — ripe for development.

A subsequent post highlighted the New Jersey Mobile Home Park Law:

 

As it happens there is a New Jersey law of long standing. The Mobile Home Park: Private Residential Leasehold Communities Law (the “MHP Law”), NJSA 46:8C-2 through 46:8C-21 — enacted in 1973, subsequently amended in 1977, 1983, 1991, and 1995 — gives owners of mobile homes in a leasehold park (like Ms. Dibble and the Paradise Park residents) an extensive and carefully knit safety net of rights.

A safety net, Ms. Dibble and the tenants are discovering, with a potential huge loophole.

 

“Desperate city councilors on the hot seat!”

The residents’ position was being stoutly defended by the two Democratic city councilors, leaving the three Republicans short of the two-thirds super-majority necessary to enact the new zoning being sought by the developer. As Mr. Lynch reported in the Two Rivers Times:

This all stems from an effort to rectify the differences between the Master Plan, adopted in November 2004, and the existing land use ordinances. The Master Plan, in calling for the creation of a MXD, speaks of a “trend for mobile home parks to evolve into uses that are more consistent with surrounding land use patterns.”

 

True enough. Even though they seem very dense when you walk through them, mobile home parks are in fact a low-density usage, because all the structures are single-story. Real density without psychological density comes from going up — even the normal home has two if not three stories, plus usually a basement. It’s entirely understandable that many people would want Paradise Park redeveloped — just take a look at its location! Logically, in fact, the Law of Economic Gravity practically cries out for redevelopment.

 

With the exception of the MXD there appears to be general agreement on a vast majority of the proposed alterations to existing zoning laws. The Master Plan called for the council to revise their ordinances within one year to be consistent with the Master Plan.

The Paradise Park Homeowners Association is currently involved in [a] legal skirmish with Bollerman seeking the right to purchase the property.

William Eaton, a lawyer representing the Paradise Park Homeowners Association has said at public meetings that his clients take no issue with potential development of the park.

Ah ha, says the blog critic, if the residents are prepared to move, then where lies the dispute?

 

While the doctors dispute, the patient expires

Rather, their concern is that through rezoning the property, the tenants could lose their protections under the Mobile Home Park: Private Residential Leasehold Communities Law commonly known as the “Mobile Home Park Law.” Eaton has said that according to this law, if Bollerman received a use variance in redeveloping the property he would be required to relocate the residents.

Now, in my interview with Mr. Lynch, I found myself being dragged figuratively onstage for some improvisational lines:

O’Neil said during the planning board meeting that Eaton has provided him with no physical evidence supporting this claim and Smith said that unless Eaton provides the borough with detailed information on his methodology, claims that Bollerman could save millions through the creation of the MXD are “blather.”

To be precise,

 

I need you to zero in on your precise claims

I suggested that Mr. Eaton would serve both his clients and the city well if he produced a memorandum of law and fact setting forth the situation at Paradise Park, the law as it would apply if there were no rezoning, how it would apply with a rezoning, and a financial analysis of the two scenarios. Then we could see how much money is at stake.

However, from a purely financial standpoint, Smith supports the intellectual underpinnings of those seeking to rezone the mobile home park. Citing a 2001 study [More like an analytical essay — Ed.] by Richard Genz entitled “Why Advocates Need to Rethink Manufactured Housing“, Smith said that with an average mobile home community, a municipality typically pays more to provide services than the property produces in tax revenue. This can be explained because the typical mobile home park does not produce a great deal of real estate tax revenue while it consumes a great deal of utilities and typically places a high number of children in the school system.

 

To be completely clear, my point is simply that, if a locality is an economic enterprise, then there are better investments for its land than mobile home parks.

From the municipality’s perspective, Smith argues “more or less any other use of the property has a better cost-benefit analysis.”

Said another way, if the site were vacant, I doubt very many urban planners, much less municipal officials, would smack their foreheads and say, “Hey, this would be a great spot for a mobile home park!” The park’s existence on this magnificence site is a historical accident … but that having been said does not ipso facto give the locality the right to evict the residents without regard to their legitimate expectations and their rights under the law.

None of the foregoing justifies simply rolling over those residents,

 

We’ll be darned if you’ll steamroller us!

Indeed, the dissenting minority in Kelo v. New London very specifically concerned itself with protecting the minority’s rights against the majority, fearing that the majority would see a town as a purely economic proposition and follow the money, not the appropriate long-term policy.

Overall, Smith believes that the best solution would involve either the borough or Eaton conducting a thorough and accurate study of the impact of the potential rezoning in relations to the “Mobile Home Park Law.” This document should be available to the public.

Good governance and open process are the antidotes to many chargers of malfeasance.

“They are absolutely allowed to say, ‘We think that there is a better use for this property than a mobile home park’,” Smith said of the elected officials supporting the rezone. “But if in that process you have residents with a right, well you ought to at least know that and look them in the eye and tell them what you are doing and why.”

 

Yet a week ago, it appeared that the questions I was suggesting be posed would never see the light of political debate:

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

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