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Political Buzz
Let's talk politics.
Monday, December 1st, 2008
Pierce council kills proposed moratorium on converting mobile home parks
Posted by David Wickert @ 02:29:25 pm

A proposed six-month moratorium on converting mobile home parks to other uses died in a Pierce County Council committee today.

The council’s Rules Committee voted 2-1 to table the proposal indefinitely after mobile home park owners testified the moratorium would deprive them of their property rights.

The proposal stemmed from an announcement earlier this year that the Country Aire Manor mobile home park in South Hill will close to make way for a shopping center anchored by Home Depot. Park residents have until Feb. 28 to move. Most already have.

Country Aire isn’t the only mobile home park in jeopardy.

Rising land values tempt many park owners to sell. According to the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, 18 parks around the state closed last year, affecting 534 households. An estimated 1,000 parks in urban areas are threatened.

For months Country Aire residents pleaded with the County Council to save their homes. County officials said there was little they could do.

But two Democratic council members – Tim Farrell of Tacoma and Calvin Goings of Puyallup – proposed a six-month moratorium on converting mobile home parks to other uses. They said it would give the county time to develop a long-term strategy to preserve mobile homes.

Their plan got a hearing today. Nearly everyone who testified opposed the plan. Among them were numerous mobile home park owners who said the moratorium would amount to taking their private property without compensation.

“When a park is no longer viable, the owner should do what he sees is best for his pocketbook,” said Buddy Cox of Orting, the manager of a park.

[More:]

Two of three Rules Committee members agreed. Councilman Shawn Bunney, R-Lake Tapps, said he feels sorry for anyone who has been forced from a home.

But Bunney said low-income mobile home park residents qualify for state relocation assistance. And he said the county must balance the needs of displaced residents with park owners’ property rights.

Bunney said the county also must consider the economic development benefits of converting mobile home parks to commercial and industrial uses.

Goings said the moratorium would allow the county time to develop long-term solutions. He said the county has used moratoriums for billboards and other purposes in the past.

At least part of Goings’ plan will proceed. The county next year will consider more permissive zoning to allow mobile home development in urban areas.

Categories: Pierce County • 8 comments

COMMENTS:

cherbear18121965 @ 14:44 - Monday, December 1st, 2008 Email
Now that the elections over and they are assured of having seats they do away with helping people in their county displaced by the selling of the land under their homes. They should be ashamed!
Blaine @ 15:25 - Monday, December 1st, 2008 Email
The houses that are owned on the property are worth, in some cases, as much as the land.....What about our property rights??? Some wonderful, older, homes cannot be moved and there goes some old person's money and savings.... It's pure greed to let park owners sell out from under people and greed on the County or City's part because they are looking for those high tax payments.... Damn You All!!!
Blaine @ 15:29 - Monday, December 1st, 2008 Email
You'll spend millions to save a block of trees or a salmon, but let hundreds of people get kicked out of their homes due to greed......
lorenbliss @ 15:39 - Monday, December 1st, 2008 Email
When Pierce County voted overwhelmingly Republican in the councilmanic elections, it voted overwhelmingly in favor of savage greed and murderous profiteering, the results of which we are now seeing. Not that the Democrats are any better -- note how they promised much that Obama's appointments prove they have no intention of delivering -- but at least they do not publicly celebrate what amounts to the euthanasia of seniors as "best for the pocketbook."
GOPGirl @ 17:45 - Monday, December 1st, 2008 Email
I cant tell if you people are ignorant or what. People who live in mobile home parks make a choice to RENT land. Do you people not understand what a rental agreement is? They owe you nothing for the years you paid on thier land! Whats next, apartment renters complaining about "all they've put into it" when thier building gets sold? As in all businesses, the owners need to do what is profitable and good for them.

I would love to see a mobile home worth what the land is on it. They depreciate so quickly I highly doubt it.

I for one was proud of the stand the Rules Committee took today. Good for them not to go down such a slippery slope.
lorenbliss @ 20:44 - Monday, December 1st, 2008 Email
In response to GOPGirl, truly civilized peoples -- that is Europeans, Asians, the few genuine U.S. socialists and the like -- recognize that owners of rental property actually have some obligation toward the public good and even toward those from whom they extract profit. Thus the public-interest and tenant-protection laws of Europe, Japan, South Korea etc. -- laws the U.S. notably lacks save in New York City and some of the surrounding states and municipalities. That such measures are notoriously absent elsewhere in the U.S. is of course yet another symptom of the tyrannosauric viciousness that is the core ethos of capitalism -- the very viciousness of which this nation has become the planetary archetype.

Historically speaking, the present-day lack of tenant protections in Washington state is especially damning, made so by the fact it results from methodical nullification of the 1974 Landlord-Tenant Act. The '74 LTA was truly landmark legislation in that it granted tenants the Constitutional and civil rights they had hitherto been officially denied: for example, before LTA '74, a landlord could inspect his premises on demand and without notice 24/7, and a tenant could be summarily evicted merely because the landlord did not like the books in the tenant's bookshelves. While LTA '74 outlawed such atrocities, virtually all its protections have since been swept away by decades of political betrayal in which increasingly bought-off Democrats sided ever-more-frequently with definitively anti-tenant, anti-working-class Republicans: an especially revealing demonstration of how the alleged two-party system is in bitter truth a single party united by GOPorker values.
ldozy123 @ 09:49 - Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 Email
After attending many meetings where these same owners have pleaded for all the beni's they can get based on their ownership of dwindling mobile home parks. They pull the heartstrings for protections, tax breaks, etc based on their providing a large segment of senior or affordable housing left in Pierce. They tell their tenets and prospcetive tenets they would never sell or break up their "community" But shock, when it comes to putting their own money where their mouths are, the story changes.
Personally, I've never seen the logic of "renting" the land I place my residence on, unless I have a 99 year lease. But then again, I also own a home in unincorporated Pierce County, which means its only mine till the County decides it wants it for something else.
ldozy123 @ 09:54 - Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 Email
PS: Renters in these parks better take serious note of this. All that was proposed was a 6 month moratorium... not a permanent one. During this six months, Park owners could have negotiated some real benefits when aiding Pierce to maintain this form of affordable housing. The owners short sighted greed in being scared of a six month limit during a period of significant property devaluation is a BIG tell for park residents.

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