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Mobile home parks devoured

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published December 31, 2006

Mobile homes were a major story during 2006 as one park after another was sold to developers eager to develop big tracts of land.

While the stories of the elderly and poor being displaced tugged at people's hearts, the disappearance of mobile homes served to highlight other issues facing Pinellas County and all of Florida. Those included conflicting property rights, affordable housing and housing density.

The first battle was one of property rights. Mobile home park owners asserted their rights to sell and profit from property they owned. And those who owned mobile homes, but not the land beneath them, cried foul. They argued that they, too, had a right to receive value for the homes they were losing.

Some mobile home owners had paid tens of thousands for their homes. Others had spent money and sweat equity improving them. Yet state law only requires a developer to give single-wide owners $3,000 and double-wide owners $6,000 to help defray the costs of moving them. If the mobile home cannot be moved, owners of single-wides receive $1,375 and owners of double-wides get $2,750.

Several mobile homeowners associations tried suing, with mixed results. Owners at Bay Pines Mobile Home Park, for example, found it difficult to afford and keep an attorney. But one of their lawsuits, against the seller of the property, is still pending.

With the inevitable loss of their homes, some homeowners had trouble finding another place to live. Many were elderly and on fixed incomes or poor and unable to afford the high rents and costs of buying another home, especially after they had lost most of the money they'd invested in their mobile homes.

The Pinellas County Commission tried to help by passing a Mobile Home Transition Ordinance that would help pay rent for some of the displaced homeowners for two years. But the ordinance was not well-received by homeowners who pointed out that it helped only some and was limited to two years. At the end of that time, elderly and disabled people on fixed incomes would still be unable to afford a place to live.

The county, and some of the cities, also began looking at ways to encourage developers to build more affordable housing. One solution was to allow the developer to increase the density - or build more housing units than would normally be allowed - provided that the extra apartments or condominiums were set aside for those who could not afford to pay the soaring property or rental costs.

Disappearing parks

Lawyers got involved

Here is the status of three of the most notable mobile home parks that were sold or closed in 2006:

Bay Pines and Bay View Mobile Home parks: The Seminole parks were purchased by developer John Loder for an estimated $38-million. By Tuesday, both were vacant and demolition had started on the homes. Loder has said he has no immediate plans for the park given the cooled housing market.

Bay Pines homeowners had filed suit against Loder and against the law firm of DeLoach and Hofstra, which acted as trustees for the former owner. The lawsuit with Loder was settled; the latter is scheduled for a Thursday hearing.

Golden Lantern Mobile Home Park: Triax purchased the park on Park Boulevard in unincorporated Pinellas for about $4.8-million. Residents have until May 1 to vacate. No plans have been announced for the park.

Homeowners were outraged when the county agreed that then-Golden Lantern activist Charlie Plancon was correct when he said Pinellas had wrongly advertised the land use change. That admission meant that Triax would have to start over to get the land use change. It also meant that a settlement that would pay some other homeowners about $18,000 each fell through because it was contingent on the change.

The homeowners are contemplating a lawsuit, although their attorney, Joe Magri of Tampa, said he understands Triax and the county are negotiating to see if something else can be done.

Plancon was not able to gloat in front of the County Commission. He had been arrested in July and charged with drug possession and two firearm violations after he allegedly waved a gun in the Nickel City bar just down the street from the Golden Lantern.

Plancon was still in jail at year's end with a pretrial hearing scheduled for July 4.

[Last modified December 30, 2006, 22:06:22]