On a brighter note, the Clinton Library could be in serious trouble.
Posted on 06/25/2005 7:05:21 AM PDT by ex-Texan
The superheated housing market isn't a bonanza for everyone: Residents of at least four Portland area manufactured-housing parks have been forced to move in the past few months as park owners, seduced by skyrocketing land prices, sell to developers.
Manufactured home parks in Beaverton, Tualatin, Wilsonville and West Linn serving primarily low-income older residents have shut down within the past six months or are in the process of closing. They're being redeveloped for retail use or housing, with rents expected to far exceed what is collected from park residents.
"Everybody's upset," said Vera Loar, 90, a 20-year resident of a Wilsonville mobile home park slated for closure. "A lot of us couldn't sell our homes even if we wanted to. We'd just be stuck with them."
The trend worries housing experts and some elected officials who say the suburbs lack affordable housing. For years, manufactured home parks have been an option for buyers who can't afford conventional houses or pricey condos. As those parks close and home prices continue to increase, more and more retired couples will be shut out of the housing market, experts said.
"It's definitely a concern, but the tools to address it are limited," said Jack Kenny, deputy director of the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department. "We're putting our heads together to find out what the alternatives would be, but they all take money."
The latest casualty appears to be Willamette Cove in West Linn, a 65-unit park with tidy homes set in a tree-lined cove. Residents, many of them veterans, stood outside the park Thursday afternoon waving signs saying "Broken Homes" and "Shame on You," a reaction to the decision to sell by Jerry Jennings, the park's owner.
Residents managed to cobble together $6.5 million to buy the park from Jennings, who built it 13 years ago. His mother, Jenny Bonner, lives in the park, and residents said they had forged a close relationship over the years with the family, baby-sitting Jennings' children and hosting a baby shower for his wife.
But last week, Jennings announced that he had an offer of $9.8 million from Sequoia Homes, a prominent Portland homebuilder that wants to replace the park with condominiums.
Residents, by turns furious and worried, said they have few alternatives.
Barbara Roesch, 57, who works part time as a companion for the elderly, paid $63,000 in cash for her home a year ago and had hoped to sell it at a profit in five years. Her 80-year-old mother and 80-year-old bedridden stepfather also soon may have to find a new home: They live in Thunderbird Mobile Club in Wilsonville, which also is scheduled to close.
"To me, it's like an Enron," Roesch said. "You work all your life, and you lose it. I see the worry on people's faces. We really don't know what we're going to do."
Jennings said he has received several offers for the land over the years but held onto the 11-acre park. Sequoia made him an offer that was too good to refuse.
"I guess they're entitled to feel how they want to feel," he said of the park's residents, who pay $575 a month in rent. "Land is worth what it's worth. It has value, and it's market driven."
As recently as five years ago, developers wouldn't touch manufactured home parks because redevelopment costs were too high, said Jerry Johnson, a real estate economist. Now, with shovel-ready land getting scarce, builders are turning to formerly undesirable terrain, and prices have jumped, from about $250,000 an acre in 2000 to $350,000 to $500,000 an acre today, Johnson said.
"A bit of a mania"
"There's a bit of a mania going on right now," he said. "Sales prices have been so strong and the market has been so strong that it's outbidding other uses for the land."
Oregon law requires mobile home park owners to give tenants who own their homes a full year's notice before they have to move, but the law doesn't require that tenants be compensated. Making such moves more difficult, though, are rules that most parks have against accepting relocated homes more than 10 years old. Nearly all of the homes in Wilsonville's Thunderbird Mobile Club are older than that.
Residents also may be reluctant to pay $15,000 to $20,000 to relocate only to be told they have to move again if their new park closes. Since 2003, according to the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department, more than 45 parks have closed statewide. There are 301 manufactured home parks in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, according to the agency.
Wilsonville officials say they're considering amending the city's affordable-housing requirements because of concern about where Thunderbird's residents would go.
Reviewing the rules
Recommendations could include stipulations that a certain percentage of new housing on a redeveloped site fall into a category considered "affordable," said Balise Edmonds, the city's manager for current planning. City officials also may consider breaks on property taxes or reductions in fees charged for the new roads, lights and sewers needed to service the property.
In Tualatin, city officials recently changed an aging mobile home park's zoning from residential to commercial, paving the way for retail and office development near the newly opened Bridgeport Village. The seven residents who still live at the park have until February to leave.
"I can't even tell you how difficult this has been for all of us," said Carolyn Hayes, whose husband, Don, manages the park. "But it's pretty clear that the land is far too expensive to use for this purpose anymore. Mobile homes are just a thing of the past."
Lisa Grace Lednicer: 503-294-5117; lisalednicer@news.oregonian.com
There woman who paid $ 63,000 for her modular home last year does not have any recourse in Oregon. She is just SOL. She cannot move the home and cannot sell it. In effect, the owners of the housing park were just enriched by the money she spent in good faith. Money thrown down a rat hole will not be reimbursed.
In the meantime, Oregon is perched on the edge of a very hard landing when the real estate bubble bursts. Speculators are driving up home prices and mortgage companies are running illegal foreclosure schemes.
Oh, well, not for me to worry. Just a geezer living in the Peoples Republic of Oregon.
Thanks for posting this article!
I live in a Family Park in Salem and now I am wondering how long it will be before we have to pack and move,because of the Park owner wanting to get richer.
Thanks, this was an interesting article. I guess once the real estate bubble bursts and houses go into foreclosure, there will be demand once again for mobile home parks. The business cycle is tough to stop.
Just my personal opinion, but I would try to sell your home and move as soon as possible. I was considering moving near the coast and was looking at a few places over there.
But, for the most part, the coastal properties were in pretty poor condition. The Portland metro area has some beautiful parks filled with lovely modular homes in Tualitin, Lake Oswego, and North Plains. But this article is predicting very bad things will soon be happening.
I am thinking you are correct and I'll try to do as you suggest!
These are sad times indeed!
I feel for these people, but they have no more recourse than an apartment renter.
The exact same thing has been happening in southern Delaware for years, and like the folks in this article - many of the people being displaced are retirees.
Just a thought. If these tenants had the wherewithal to put together $6.5 million, they could purchase a tract of land and develop their own park, with individual title to each lot. Someone should help them.
"A taking of property without compensation is a taking regardless of who is doing the taking".
These are tenants correct? They are renting the space so they don't own it. And I assume they are renting for a certain period of time and when that time expires, the owner is free to do whatever with the land afterwards.
These 80 & 90 year-olds have no right to live that long and stand in the way of progress. Off with their heads.
"Just a thought. If these tenants had the wherewithal to put together $6.5 million, they could purchase a tract of land and develop their own park, with individual title to each lot."
Good point.
stop...You are making sense...
Sorry. They own the house. Same as a car. They do not own the land. Their homes are not real estate. Trust me. I KNOW.
I think that some of this activity is in part caused by the restrictive zoning practices in the Portland area specifically and in Oregon in general.
The developers would probably like to develop cheaper land that is further out, but zoning restrictions agressively try to limit "sprawl" and those restrictions artificially up the value of land that is already zoned for housing.
Even when adjacent land is unused, it is not always available to developers because the planners decide, and restrict how much density of developed land is permitted and how slow the spread of development must proceded.
I know in one area of Hillsboro (west of Portland) this resulted in Wal Mart seeeking to plop a Mega store in the midst of some housing neighborhoods (most fairly new) because open land on Highway 26 (runs west from Portland to the shore) was not available to them - still not open for development.
I have no beef with Walmart. But traffic is traffic and congestion is congestion and when an area is dominated by homes, churches and schools most people rightly prefer to have most of the commercial traffic in areas of predominately commercial use. I think Wal Mart agrees but their options were limited. Unfortunaetly for them but fortunately for that one area, Wal Mart lost it's request for a zoning variance, after some public meetings on the issue.
On a brighter note, the Clinton Library could be in serious trouble.
Impossible under the circumstances. Read the article more closely.
"You are incorrect. These people own their modular homes and many are beautiful with three bedrooms, two baths and large custom kitchens. But they rent the land from the park for about $500 per month. Most paid cash for their modular homes. Now, they cannot sell them and cannot move them anywhere. No protection at all. Just one of the very hard lessons being learned by retired people every day."
They don't own the land, though. Maybe they should have signed a longer lease.
Had to happen. The government just can't provide homes for the homeless on the taxes paid by mobile home owners and occupants. The states appetite for taxes can only be sated (temporarily sated) if everyone with an earned income is forced to purchase and occupy homes they can't afford.
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