When, at a home owners association meeting earlier this year, Sylvia Gabrielson asked Roger Bush, Pierce County Councilman for her district, what she and her husband were to do if they could not find a space to move their home to before February 28 next year, he said, “Walk away and go get Section 8 housing.” If that was a joke, he wasn’t laughing.  Sylvia wasn't laughing, either.

A perpetual nightmare began February 7th when tenant-home owners at Country Aire Manor Mobile Home Park received official notice from their new landlord, Verus – Puyallup, LLC, that they were being evicted from their park to make way for conversion to a commercial development.

Eighty percent of residents are retirees on fixed incomes. Average rent for home space is $410 per month, which is typical for the area. The gravity of the situation became clear when the Pierce County Department of Planning and Land Services mailed out a Notice of Application. Illustrations on plans showed that this community of affordable housing is to be replaced by a new Home Depot store and its massive parking lot—even though there is a Home Depot store just 4 miles north.

The previous owner, Mrs. Orpha Larson, sold the mobile home park to Columbia Properties with the understanding that it would remain a mobile home park. The buyers told her they already owned another, and would maintain Country Aire Manor as a mobile home park. According to Mrs. Larson, she sold the property on January 31 for $4,020,000.

When Greed Becomes ‘Too Much’, Who Will Recognize It?

Home Depot’s agents, based in Arizona, bought Country Aire Manor land for $4 million barely 6 month ago and added to it lands previously owned by a landscape business and two mobile home dealerships for a total of $14M. 

Through their own association (CAMMHOA), residents approached Home Depot’s agents to buy the park back. Verus offered to sell it only if the Association would buy all the property clear up to Wal-Mart for $15M. With the assistance of Resident Owned Properties (ROP), a non-profit organization, residents offered $4.5M for the park alone. On May 22nd their offer was rejected and countered at $20M.  

Home Depot laid waste to another mobile home park of affordable housing to build their new store in Spanaway. Rumors abound that the Spanaway store will soon close and Home Depot managers are encouraging poverty-wage workers to transfer to the store that will soon occupy County Aire Manor Mobile Home Park.

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 a local housing crisis affecting thousands of residents.

Pierce County’s leading edge state crisis

Pierce County has more mobile home parks than any other county in the state. Home owners began looking for spaces to move their homes to. CAM has been a mobile home park for 30 years. People who live there are dependent upon its location because families, doctors, care givers, hospitals, close-in shopping and bus lines are all nearby.

In a recent survey of mobile home parks--excluding most of Tacoma because it is too far away--out of 256 mobile home parks, only 207 remained. They have a total of 9,086 spaces with only 38 openings. 5 require upfront cash outlays of up to $47,000. 8 are in a park that was half wiped out by river flooding in 2006. Others have requirements their manufactured homes do not meet.

Early on, some home owners moved to other parks or apartments, bought stick-built houses, or simply moved out of the area. Today, the residents who remain are under mandate of law to move, but have nowhere to go. When residents asked Bush for help, Bush told them that their best option might be to lobby the state legislature for in increase in relocation reimbursement.

There is no doubt that the Pierce County Council and Roger Bush are well informed. Dean Webber, spokesman for the Association, has spoken at every Council meeting for the past 17 weeks.

Pierce County is on 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. Bush serves the Country Aire Manor council district and should have taken the lead to level the playing field so that the Home Depots and others like them—who profit mightily from the misery of others—bare responsibility for restoring fairness. King County gave some parks permanent zoning status. Snohomish County put a moratorium on park closures.

The displacement of primarily senior citizens on limited incomes who live in mobile home parks is far from over. In the end, nearly all mobile home parks will be closed. Nearly 10,000 households are going to be displaced. These people cannot afford for the Council to be in denial.

Hard core solutions

When land owners and owners of manufactured homes teamed up about 30 years ago, land owners made money on their fallow, tax-burdened land, and manufactured home owners had spaces for their homes at affordable rents. Today, what started as a partnership looks more like a pyramid scheme--with land owners getting rich and home owners going broke. This time, if CAM home owners are unable to move to other spaces, they will have to turn over their titles to Verus and walk with nothing.

That is only as bad as the lack of other affordable housing solutions. Senior housing units have long waiting lists. In 2006 Section 8 housing opened for 3 days to take applications and closed after receiving over 3000 applications. It will not open again for another 5 years. Homeless shelters are full; 1600 people in Pierce County are homeless every night. And now, mobile home parks, the one already existing form of affordable housing, is being destroyed as council members step away from a very hot potato in an election year. 

The Pierce County Council and Executive in 2006 appointed a Housing Affordability Task Force. When it submitted the report last spring, it failed to include viable solutions for mobile home parks. Its report is due in October.

This problem is gnarly: the time is ripe to solve it. For whatever reason, council members and others seem to be short on ideas. Here are 5.

• First, and most importantly, call for a moratorium today before one more mobile home park gets closed, and before any more people are dragged into this excruciatingly painful quagmire.
• The point of purchase is the time to consider the needs of displacees. When a home owner goes to sell his home, if his roof leaks, he has to fix it before the sale closes. And that is the way it should be on the purchase and sale of mobile home parks. 
• A Human Impact Statement should be required of every developer.  Government agencies require Environmental Impact Statements because society believes these are essential to assure the protection and preservation of salmon and owl, creeks and drainage.  People are part of our habitat, and before the county approves the wanton destruction of one more manufactured home community, the human impacts need to be studied. Right up front. In the planning stages. 
• Developers/land owners should pay impact fees to correct the housing problems they are creating. Impact and mitigation fees are collected by the county from developers to offset the stresses their developments will place on existing roads, sewers and schools. When a developer or land owners makes a land use change involving a manufactured home community, no less should be required.
• Relocate the parks. When developers destroy a wetland, they are required to create a new one to replace it. There is no reason why a developer should not be caused to create a new manufactured home community to relocate the displaces to.

There is no more time for delays. The clock is ticking. Everyone has a part to play. The Pierce County Council can either stop the closure of Country Aire Manor Park or provide alternatives. Verus--and all its financial backers—can be heroes and participate in finding solutions.  If Mr. Bush must choose between developers on one hand, and senior citizens, the handicapped, the ill, and the families with children who live at Country Air Manor on the other, then let him use his many talents to persuade developers to do the right thing by these people. If he is too compromised by big business to do that, then it is the job of other council members of more empathetic and compassionate minds to do it for him. 

The people of this county can act now by demanding a moratorium that will put a stop to further closures of mobile home parks. If this problem is so tough that it has taken 4 years already just to study it, then it is going to take more than the 6 months that are left before the final closure of Country Aire Manor to come up with practical, workable solutions. A moratorium will go a long way toward giving everyone the time needed to do the work and restoring fairness and justice. It is time for all of us to do the right thing!