Posted on 11/06/2004 12:15:02 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
MANVEL - Dietra Smith bought a mobile home after the old two-story house where she lived with her husband burned in May.
But now city officials say zoning regulations prohibit the couple from moving the home onto the 10 acres where they have lived at the end of Cemetery Road for 33 years.
"We have no other place to go," Smith, 60, said as she stood in front of the 30-foot-long travel trailer where she and her husband, Ed, temporarily live. "If they don't let us move it here, what else are we to do?"
In an attempt to beautify itself, this Brazoria County city of 3,046 adopted tough zoning regulations in 2001. Its goal is to stay away from unregulated growth that might see dilapidated mobile homes and unsightly businesses put up next to upscale homes.
"It's not that Manvel is trying to be cruel," said Gary Garnett, chairman of Manvel's Planning and Zoning Commission. Many other cities, with the exception of places like Houston, are also becoming increasingly strict about zoning.
Manvel does allow mobile homes in areas specifically zoned for them, but Smith said she has a strong attachment to the 10 acres where she and her husband, who has Alzheimer's disease, live.
She doesn't want to move to a mobile home park or to an apartment. She enjoys having the room for her six horses, two dogs and two cats, she said.
Looking through some photographs charred in the fire, she came across a photograph of Fay-Ba-Sha, a stallion she owned for 21 years. "That was always my favorite horse," she said sadly. "He's buried back there."
Smith said she was led to believe she could get a hardship variance, but Garnett said he told her at three different zoning commission meetings that the ordinance prohibits the commission from granting variances for mobile homes.
"If you do that," he said of variances, "then you'll have to do it for everyone."
Another ordinance passed in 2003 specifically forbids the zoning commission to issue variances for mobile homes outside specific districts. Anybody who violates the ordinance can be fined up to $2,000 a day.
Smith said the dealer who sold her the home won't even move it onto her property unless she gets a city permit.
"We're not cold," Manvel Mayor Delores Martin said. "But once you say no to one person, then you have to say no to everybody."
If Manvel starts to allow unrestricted land use, then attempts to improve the looks of the city will be impossible, she said.
Smith said her manufactured home, as mobile homes are often called, won't be an eyesore. Texas 6, the main thoroughfare through the city, is visible from her 10 acres, but her place is at the end of a tiny street. Cemetery Road dwindles into a gravel lane in front of her home.
Across the road a neighbor who ran a trucking business has parked the rusting remains of dump trucks, 18-wheelers, bulldozers and other old vehicles. Because the vehicles were there when the zoning ordinance was adopted, they are allowed to remain.
Smith said she got $68,000 in insurance money for her burned house, far less than it would have cost to build a frame house to replace it. Her job as an aide at a nursing home and her husband's Social Security payments don't provide enough money for them to buy a new house, she said. Her two daughters can't help them out.
A modular home, which is made in sections and brought in pieces onto the site and looks much more like a standard piece-built house, is allowed under the ordinance. But such a home still would have been too expensive, Smith said. It would have cost almost all of her insurance money, leaving none for furniture, site preparation and other costs.
"She's got her mind made up what she wants to do," Martin said. "She doesn't want to listen to anybody else."
Said Smith: "We don't know what else to do. We're lost."
richard.stewart@chron.com
Granted, it sorely needs beautification, but this "no exceptions," on the part of the commission, is extreme.
Don't tell me, let me guess....
Delores Martin is a DemonRat, right?
There's an Arkansas joke in here somewhere's.
Imagine someone wanting to do what they want with their own property.
Where in the world would someone pick up this crazy idea.
Blessings, bobo
10 acres in a rural sounds good enough to have a temporary trailer to me. way too extreme.
Zoning is a form of government meant to allow the very well connected or well to do variances no poor need apply. Who would of thought Manvel, of all places, would grow into a place with no heart. Where is Habitat for Humanity when you really need them.
When those people first bought and moved onto that land no one in that part of the world even heard of zoning. Deed restrictions were the way of the world in those days. I hate zoning.
For those that want to see some real trailer trash go to:
http://www.missouritrailertrash.com/
maybe someone can link that for me and others.
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