Everett approves new land use zone for manufactured homes

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 8, 2026

EVERETT — The Everett City Council voted Wednesday to create a new land use zone that will protect certain manufactured housing communities in the city from redevelopment.

Manufactured homes are a relatively unique form of housing. Most homeowners own both the house they live in and the land the home sits on. A homeowner in a manufactured housing community, however, owns the physical dwelling they live in, but a property owner owns the land the home is located on. The landowner pays a portion of property taxes as well as for services like trash, sewer, water, landscaping and amenities. The homeowner pays rent to the property owner in exchange, as well as property taxes levied on the dwelling.

That system can be effective for some people looking for an affordable ownership option, particularly new homeowners or seniors. But it also leaves homeowners susceptible to cost increases if owners of the land decide to raise rents exponentially, as the homeowners have no control over the land their dwellings sit on, said Alice Ann Wetzel, Everett’s long range planning manager, at an April 22 council meeting.

“If you’re renting, and you’re in a house or an apartment, it’s easier and you can move your belongings out and go find another place,” Wetzel said. “That is not necessarily the case with a manufactured home.”

As part of the city’s 2025 comprehensive plan update, Everett had planned to implement a new land use zone with the goal of retaining the manufactured home parks as a source of affordable housing.

There are only 10 locations that would have fit the bill for the new zone across the city, Wetzel said on April 22. Seven of those locations were designated as manufactured housing communities under the new zone — three locations where the homes were almost entirely occupied by renters were not included.

“For the vast majority of those sites, they’re like tenants in any other building,” Wetzel said of the three mobile home parks not included in the zones.

The new zones limit the land use to of the seven locations to maintaining the existing manufacture housing communities, unless “circumstances beyond the control of the owner of the community have changed resulting in no reasonable economic use of the property,” a city council memo reads. The building of new manufactured housing communities remains prohibited by the city, Wetzel said.

In a statement Wednesday, Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin wrote that the ordinance was an “important action to preserve an affordable housing option in Everett.”

“This new ordinance offers new protections for the homeowners, preserving this housing option into the future,” Franklin wrote.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.