Manufactured Home News Breifs From Across U.S.
The following are snippets from news and opinion reports referencing manufactured housing.
New York – County gets $550,000 to fund mobile, manufactured home replacements.
(Source: Fingerlakes.com) – The New York State Office of Community Renewal recently announced that Livingston County had been awarded $550,000 in funding through its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), which will be used to fund a Mobile and Manufactured Home Replacement Project in partnership with Cattaraugus Community Action, Inc (CCA) and the Livingston County Land Bank Corporation.
The project will fund the removable and replacement of a select amount of qualifying owner-occupied, dilapidated mobile homes in the County at no cost to the respective homeowner. To qualify, properties must meet condition screens set by CDBG and must be owner-occupied. Additionally, owners must be of low to moderate income and meet qualifications established by the grant.
Livingston County and CCA expect to begin administering the program in 2023.
Learn more about this and other projects within the County by visiting the Livingston County Land Bank’s website.
Propane Council (PERC) Offers Retailers $6,000 incentive to install propane in display model home(s)
(Source: PERC) – The Manufactured Housing Retailer Incentive Program encourages propane suppliers to work with manufactured home retailers to include propane appliances in display model homes.
Each sales center can receive $6,000 to install model homes containing appliances to help showcase the benefits of building with propane.
The funds will cover any increases in the cost of the model home to incorporate propane, including the cost to convert appliances, install the propane system and perform safety checks. Both the propane supplier and manufactured home retailer are required to report sales of propane homes from the retailer on a semi-annual basis for three years.
Learn more about the qualification or register for the program by visiting propane.com.
West Virginia – Class action lawsuit filed against owners of mobile home parks in Mercer County
(Source: WFXR FOX) – A class action lawsuit is filed against an out-of-state firm that owns five mobile home parks in the Mercer County area. It includes Garner Estates, Elk ViewMHP, Country Roads, Shadow View, and Delaney MHP.
Resident Michael Todd said he’s furious at the situation he’s been put in.“I feel like it’s cruel as far as people who’re already low-income and finding out right before Christmas that they may be losing their home. I just feel like that’s cruel.” Todd said.
Mountain State Justice is the local firm that decided to sue Homes of America LLC, the company owning the mobile home parks. Attorney Adam Wolfe said the firm needed to do something to help these residents.
“It would be great if ultimately some laws could be passed to prevent this from happening again,” said Todd.
San Diego, Cal. – Prefabricated construction could lower housing prices in San Diego.
(Source: kpbs San Diego) – A prefabricated house may look like most other modern homes, but the process of getting there is rather different.
“Prefabricated simply means that it’s built in a factory off-site. People sometimes confuse the terminology – modular is a term we use in the industry; it’s built in sections in a factory (and) delivered to the site for assembly.” Todd Kesseler said.
Kesseler is the president of US Modular Inc., a company that specializes in manufactured and modular housing.
Kesseler said there’s a stigma about prefab housing, and getting past that is one of the biggest challenges. “We used to say that they were like your grandmother’s trailers back in the day, in that they focussed so much on being affordable that the quality wasn’t there. In today’s pre-manufactured housing, the quality is there, and they’re still less expensive than site built structures,“ he said.
According to Kessler, prefabricated construction is faster and cheaper than traditional-site construction by roughly 10% to 30%.
Colorado – Nonprofit to purchase mobile home park for a pilot project to bridge ownership for tenants.
(Source: Aspen Daily News) – A Carbondale-based social justice non-profit group this week went under contract to buy a 20-unit mobile home park outside of Glenwood Springs for $2.4 million in an attempt to buck the trend of displacement and affordable housing destruction at the hands of private-equity groups buying Colorado parks.
The Roaring Fork Community Development Corp.–the affordable housing arm of the non-profit Manus – intends to transfer ownership in coming years to 3- Mile Mobile Home Park’s residents, who own their mobile homes but pay rent for the land on which they sit.
The sellers are the children of the late Ben Krueger, a long-time Vail Valley resident who had owned and maintained the park since the early 1980s. After Krueger died in November 2021, his four children discussed selling but wanted to find a way to preserve the community fostered at 3-Mile.
“We feel blessed and lucky to be working with Manaus on a solution,” John Krueger said. “It would be hard for us to do without them.”
The sale is scheduled to close on April 30, while Manaus is aiming to transfer ownership to its tenants in three to five years.
Aspen Journalism is a non-profit, investigative news organization. For more information, visit aspenjournalism.org.
Arizona – Residents are losing their mobile homes, and Phoenix isn’t doing enough to help
(Source: AZcentral) – Opinion: Developers are buying up mobile home parks to redevelop, and residents are being displaced without enough cash to relocate. Phoenix must step in.
Families displaced from mobile home parks want the Phoenix City Council to listen to their predicament and at least try to do something about it.
But so far, city officials have taken the easy way out, saying they can’t and won’t interfere with private transactions.
That’s not acceptable. The last Major Kate Gallego and council members could do was hear residents on a formal agenda.
Since the start of 2021, “at least 30 trailer, manufactured and mobile home parks have sold for almost $260 million” in the greater Phoenix area, according to reporting by the Arizona Republic. Many of those parks are redeveloped, and while it is difficult to know how many families have been impacted, potentially thousands of residents with a stable homes are being thrown out due to no fault of their own.
They get a letter out of the blue that tells them they have 180 days to vacate, citing Arizona statutes and instructions on how they could receive $1,887.50 from a state mobile home relocation fund if they turned in their title to the landlord. Residents pay into this fund every month with their mobile home taxes.
Note: The excerpts above are from a lengthy editorial opinion by Salvador Reza, opinion contributor.
