Home Depot has teamed up with Pierce County Councilmember Roger Bush to raid retirees’ affordable housing in Bush’s district.  Based on Home Depot and Bush’s current plan, nearly 40 residents will be evicted into the cold of February 2009.  Most Pierce County JwJ activists know this already (see below for background from last month’s email). 

Roger Bush Hustles to Cover His Butt – Will the Council Protect the Residents?

            After months of ducking, Bush devoted 3 hours of Council time to hear Country Aire Manor (CAM) residents’ suggestions and criticisms.  Bush proposed a 4 page resolution filled with “whereas” but lacking help to CAM residents (R2008-118).  It was a “I feel you pain” moment.  Council-members Farrell and Goings proposed measures of temporary welfare appreciated by the residents. 

            Yet the Council recognized and asked for more study of the affordable housing crisis, raids on manufactured home communities, evictions of fixed-income retirees and low-wage workers, and homelessness.  The irony is that the Pierce County Affordable Housing Task Force already produced a sweeping report on the crisis more than 1 year ago.  It was clear that Bush had instructed County staff to research heavily for excuses not to help residents and put any responsibility on Home Depot despite testimony about moratoriums and developer-paid home relocation subsidies from allies in Snohomish and ML King Counties.  The Task Force will expedite their “Evaluation of Manufactured Home Park Conversions” to the Council meeting Tuesday August 5.

Will Home Depot and Kohl’s Accept Responsibility?

Hiding in this crisis are the multi-billion dollar corporations waiting to evict the CAM residents.  Both companies have anti-worker track records, paying poverty-wages and using state welfare programs to subsidize their substantial profits.  There is a bogus whisper campaign that Home Depot might not build at the CAM site. Yet, Home Depot’s name is on the building permit circulated to residents as recent as last week.

Join Us As We Take This Struggle to Home Depot’s Door on Saturday

(while Home Depot executives hide in the weeds out back)

Background

Using the Wal-Mart model of union-busting mixed with saturating and then shuttering suburbia, Home Depot extracts wealth from Pierce County working people.  Now, Home Depot has set its sights on evicting Puyallup mobile home residents at Meridian and 171 St, just 4 miles from another store. Eighty percent of the residents are retirees on fixed incomes.  The average rent for home space is $410 per month which is standard for the area.  Along side street intersection neighbors such as Wal-Mart, Roger Bush and Home Depot are creating obscene profit, poverty-wage jobs, and traffic jams.  They have designed an unbalanced playing field that rewards deceit and threats against exercising democratic rights.   

Roger Bush could take the lead in changing his playing field so that the Home Depots that profit mightily from the misery of others bare responsibility for restoring fairness. The Pierce County Council could simply require Home Depot’s agents to subsidize a local land purchase by the soon-to-be homeless Country Aire residents so that they can affordably relocate their homes.  Other West Coast local governments set these standards as “mitigation” when issuing permits to evicting property developers.  But Roger Bush refuses to embrace his responsibility while hiding behind false “heartbreaking” remorse.

When Greed Becomes ‘Too Much’, will they Recognize it?

Home Depot’s agents based in Arizona bought the home-park for about $4M last year.  The previous owner claims that the agents assured that residents could remain.  Through their own association (CAMMHOA), the residents approached Home Depot’s agents to buy the park land back for the same selling price.  The agents demanded to sell it back for $15M.  While residents sought financing, 2 weeks later Home Depot agents raised the price to $20M.  After residents held a rally to save the park, Home Depot’s agents refused to negotiate. These agents purchased the adjacent land that abuts Wal-Mart and reaches to the street. 

Home Depot employed the same formula in Spanaway just a few years ago, laying waste to mobile home affordable housing.  Rumors abound at the Spanaway store that it will soon close and Home Depot managers are encouraging poverty-wage workers to transfer to a Puyallup store with many job openings.

Roger Bush has helped make this mess by designing a system that benefits his property developer campaign financiers at the expense of workers and low-income residents.  It is a broken system that resembles the corruption of Rick Talbert’s Tacoma politics.  A few new affordable units cannot mask the growing epidemic of our local housing crisis for thousands of residents.  Pierce County is the leading edge of this state-wide crisis thanks to politicians like Bush and Talbert, developers like Home Depot and Mike Cohen, and a policy of government welfare to corporations without requiring responsibility.  More details are in a mobile home resident’s letter to Roger Bush, below.

As Residents Rise Up, Home Depot Agents Get Nasty

          - the story that the Tribune won’t report

Pierce County mobile home residents are building a movement for affordable housing. Far from being isolated and helpless as Home Depot and Bush expected, CAMMHOA has linked with country-wide groups that have won a moratorium on selling mobile home parks in Snohomish County and forced government to intervene to purchase and convert a mobile home park to subsidized housing in King County.  While out-of-state commercial developers were lurking in the wings, where was Roger Bush?  He was dismissing the issue saying he’s “not going to interfere with the rights of the property owner” but telling residents he was “heartbroken.”

After residents refused to be invisible, the firm manager working for Home Depot threatened that they were keeping a list and would retaliate against residents who speak out about this injustice.  Home Depot’s agent refuses to recognize the residents’ association and will only work with individual residents in a divide and conquer method.  While Home Depot’s agent publicly claims to coordinate distributing equitably meager tax-funded relocation costs good only through December, he has privately threatened to withhold help to those exercising free speech.  In this context, a recent public letter from this agent said:  “we advise you to act now to take advantage of the help that is being offered.  Those who wait in hopes of either blocking the closure of this park or because they believe they can leverage us for a better deal are going to be disappointed if they have not made other arrangements.”

Excerpts from a resident’s letter to County Councilmember Roger Bush’s Asst

“It was helpful for you to clarify that neither the Pierce County Council nor Verus is working to find land to move our homes to.  Regarding your questions surrounding the sale of the park, after the sale closed, I talked with Mrs. Larson, the original owner who, by the way, is in her eighties. Here are some excerpts.

“Ms. Larson sold to Columbia Properties because they committed to keeping Country Aire Manor as a mobile home park, and that they owned a mobile home park elsewhere. She went over the landlord tenant laws with them. They kept the promise [to keep it as a mobile home park] for a week and a half until they sold to Verus.

Mrs. Larson signed papers on January 31. Verus signed papers on or about February 8^th.

In the eight days that they held the property, Columbia Properties, made 6 million dollars.

M. Larson said that she always knew that she could have made a lot of money on the park if she would have sold it for commercial purposes. She sold for $4,000,000 plus $20,000 for personal property, such as the riding mower and other items. She sold in good faith that Country Aire Manor would continue to be used as a mobile home park. Her sale price was based on the income the park produced.” 

I was an appraiser for WSDOT when property was being acquired to widen Meridian near 176^th.  Mrs. Larson sold for about $4.60 per square foot--commercial property had sold for more.

By the time Verus bought the landscape business and the mobile home dealerships, they paid a total of $14 million. Home owners here tried to buy back the park for $4.5 million. Verus agreed to sell for $15 million only if we’d buy the property clear up to Walmart. Within about 2 weeks, they increased their price to $20 million. We could not finance the purchase of all the excess land.

It was interesting that as a representative’s assistant, you heard land owners talking 10 years ago about what would happen when mobile home parks were sold and mobile homes owners would be left as they are today. With a 30 year history in real estate experience, I never heard that discussion. 

When land owners and manufactured home owners joined together 30 years ago, it was a good partnership. Home owners got places for affordable homes and land owners got the income. Home owners believed it would remain a mutually beneficial arrangement. Instead, it’s become more like a pyramid scheme with the last buyers going broke. No one would ever have bought a manufactured home in a park if he had known he would lose his home. We certainly never would have. 

As of May in Pierce County, out of 256 mobile home parks, 14 had closed, 28 parks were gone, and 7 had converted to owned land. The remaining 207 parks have a total of 9,086 spaces with only 38 open spaces. 5 require cash outlays of up to $47,000—which is not affordable. 8 were left in a park where river flooding destroyed half the park in 2006. Many have age, roofing or siding requirements many homes do not meet.

I mentioned the woman I spoke to who works for the Pierce County Housing Authority... She said that the Section 8 program was opened and closed quickly in 2006 so no additional names could be added. There are over 3000 people on the waiting list. Might some of the 1600 people who are homeless in Tacoma/Pierce County be so because of earlier mobile home park closures? And where does the county’s money go? Aren’t the Housing Authority and Pierce County Council connected?

That owners are entitled to benefit financially from the land they own is expected. The problem is that in the change of land use, manufactured home owners—those who need affordable housing—are losing their homes, or their equities in them, which is often their retirement. They are being harmed. Our park, our neighborhood, our homes, our lives are being destroyed. Do you know anyone who believes this is right or just?”

South Sound office of Washington State Jobs with Justice
3049 S 36th St #201 Tacoma WA 98409
Phone: 253-459-5107     Fax: 206-441-5059
Email: southsound@wsjwj.org    Website: www.wsjwj.org