Mobile home residents worried

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, January 27, 2007

Another Snohomish County mobile home park is being eyed by developers, leaving some who rent spaces there wary about the future.

Mariner Village Mobile Home Park, a 165-space, seniors-only park south of Everett, is the latest in a growing list of parks in Western Washington facing the possibility of conversion into condos and townhouses.

A group of investors bought the park on 124th Street in August for $15 million.

A representative with Fort Maier Homes, a Maryland homebuilder, recently approached Snohomish County planners, asking questions about traffic circulation, an early step in the development process.

The representative also submitted mock-ups of a subdivision map with 363 townhouses, 38 cottages and 176 senior apartments.

Tiscareno Associates, a Seattle architecture firm that has designed new townhouse developments in Everett, Bothell, Kent and Redmond, drafted the maps.

Richard Beresford, of Mariner Village Mobile Home Park, LLC, says plans to develop aren’t solid, and that they may choose to preserve the park.

For Tony Carnaghi, the maps are the “handwriting on the wall” that he has feared since learning the park was sold.

“I’m sick,” said Carnaghi, 64, who paid $20,000 for a mobile home at Mariner Village in May.

Carnaghi and his wife left Maine this summer to settle in Washington for its milder winters and to be close to his stepson and six grandchildren in Bremerton.

They had just hung up the last photo on their wall when they learned of the possible development.

Other residents at the park include senior widows and widowers who are disabled and on fixed incomes.

Many of their mobile homes are too old to move, meaning the owners will have to pay to demolish them if the park closes. Some could still be saddled with mortgage payments after tearing down their own homes.

“Where do you go from here? You put your last dime into a place that you thought you were going to stay for the rest of your life … ” said Carnaghi, his deep voice trailing off.

Like many mobile home owners statewide, Carnaghi owns his unit but rents the ground beneath it.

Increasingly, people living with that type of arrangement are learning just how vulnerable they are when the marketplace changes.

As the stock of developable land near cities and towns shrinks, builders are increasingly looking to mobile home parks to build shopping centers and new homes.

With ready sewer connections, access to streets and favorable zoning, the sites are relatively easy to develop.

Condo projects replacing mobile home parks are bringing relief to moderate-income buyers and help maximize profits for developers. At the same time, park closures are displacing some of the state’s poorest people, with little money and few other choices for housing.

Between 2006 and 2008, 10 mobile homes in Snohomish County are slated to close, displacing 533 families, according to the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.

Statewide 36 parks, with 1,342 households, are scheduled to close in that time frame, according to the department.

The trend has caught the attention of state lawmakers who introduced several bills this week aimed at addressing the problem.

Whether Mariner Village is developed remains to be seen, said Beresford, one of the investors who bought the park.

The Edmonds attorney sent a letter to residents after learning of the maps submitted to the planning department.

In the letter, he stated that they could construct senior housing that could house displaced residents from the park.

“Again, this drawing only reflects one possibility regarding the development of this mobile home park and is not intended to reflect our intention to the development of the mobile home park in that manner,” he wrote.

Russell Carter, 74, president of the Mariner Village Home Owners Association, said vague statements about the park’s future places mobile home owners in limbo.

“No matter what we do there’s going to be panic and some concerns about this,” he said. “This is a crisis for some people.”

If the landlords want to close the park, they are required by state law to give Mariner Village’s 260 residents one year of notice.

Carter, a mild-mannered former Boise city planner, sat on a wood chair with leather padding in the living room of his immaculate doublewide in the heart of the park Friday.

He and his wife pay $600 a month in rent, which includes water, sewer and garbage service.

He has enough space for a long carport and a storage shed, is close to a woodsy area with a horseshoe pit, and said he enjoys living in a community where people look out for each other.

He doubts he could find another place as comfortable as the park that he settled in more than a decade ago.

“We’re in affordable housing right now,” he said. “There’s nothing around here under $250,000 to buy, and that’s out of everybody’s price range. The developers have the right to build here, but we pay the price.”