Snohomish County proposes rules to keep mobile home parks open
Published 11:50 pm Monday, August 10, 2009
A year ago, tenants were leaving Mariner Village Mobile Home Park in droves.
The park’s owners had a plan to sell the individual lots under the homes. Instead of the typical park where tenants rent spaces, Mariner Village would become a condominium community of manufactured homes. Fearful they couldn’t afford to buy the land, some people sold their homes for pennies on the dollar and moved.
Then the economy soured. Financing for the condominium plan fell through, and earlier this year, the owners decided to keep Mariner Village a rental park. Now they’re trying to fill about 60 empty spaces in the 165-lot park.
“We have never asked a single resident to leave,” said David Tingstad, an Edmonds attorney who is one of the park’s owners. “Any of those residents who left, we’d love to have them back.”
The developments at the 55-and-older community in south Everett comes as Snohomish County officials are trying to create a special zone to keep mobile home parks from closing.
The zone would make it difficult for owners to redevelop parks in urban parts of unincorporated Snohomish County. County officials believe the parks are a crucial source of affordable housing for seniors and low-income families.
An emergency ban on redeveloping mobile home parks has been in place for more than a year. County councilmen are determined to create lasting rules before the moratorium expires in October.
The Snohomish County Planning Commission, by an 8-0 vote, advised the County Council last week to adopt the new rules. They added extra conditions, including incentives to build new parks and exemptions for landlords who own all the mobile homes on their land, commission Chairman David Hambelton said.
The council is likely to schedule a public hearing on the issue within the next month.
A lousy economy may keep Mariner Village around for the foreseeable future, but’s too late for other area parks. At least 14 have closed in the county since 2006, displacing people from 669 homes, a county report says.
Tingstad said the rules would have no effect on Mariner Village because the owners have no plans to sell. Still, some of those who left the park wish safeguards had been in place earlier.
One of them is Russell Carter, the former president of the homeowners association at Mariner Village. Late last year, he and his wife moved into a Marysville duplex that his son owns. They couldn’t stand the uncertainty in their old neighborhood.
“We moved on,” he said. “No, we weren’t forced out, but the alternative wasn’t good. We aren’t gamblers, we weren’t poker players, otherwise we would’ve stayed put.”
Ed White, also former Mariner Village tenant, downsized from a 1,800-square-foot mobile home to a nearby 745-square-foot apartment in a seniors-only building.
Like many of their ex-neighbors, he and his wife sold their home for a fraction of what it was worth. Several former tenants reported selling homes that should have fetched $30,000 to $50,000 for as little as $4,000.
“We would’ve loved to have stayed there,” White said. “If the counties and cities aren’t able to do something about this, there are going to be a lot more people over time who are going to be trapped in the same situation that we’ve been trapped in.”
Not everybody agrees. Some tenants are happy they stayed.
“I think they just panicked,” said Jim Phifer, current vice president of the homeowners association. “Now, a lot of them wished they were back because the cost of renting is so high.”
County staff estimate that a special zone would protect 27 mobile home parks in the unincorporated areas.
The economic doldrums may have relieved some pressure for park owners to sell, but that’s no excuse to delay action, Council Chairman Mike Cooper said.
“I don’t think that changes anything at all,” Cooper said. “As soon as property values rebound, property owners are going to be trying to sell their property again.”
He hoped to hold a public hearing on the proposed zone by early September.
