Longview Hills @ Newport Oregon

Residents fight park-sale law

from the stateman journal

Manufactured-home park owner says he won't evict anyone

CRYSTAL BOLNER
Statesman Journal

March 5, 2005

For-sale signs are posted on 16 homes in the Iris Village manufactured-home park, a 28-lot housing park off O'Neill Road.

The residents in the park are upset about a law that allows manufactured-home parks to be subdivided and individual lots sold.

Though residents are given first choice to purchase the individual lots, loopholes in the law could allow park owners to force residents off the property if they choose not to buy.

Donna Burleigh and her husband, Stephen, faced that choice four months ago when they received a letter from the owner of the park saying the park had been subdivided, and they had 60 days to decide whether they were going to buy or move.

The note said: "Please be advised that if you elect not to purchase your lot, we will be selling it to another buyer who will probably locate a new manufactured home on the lot. The sale of your lot to a third party who is interested in locating another manufactured home on the lot will result in your having to remove your home from the lot. We do not intend to own any lots in Iris Village in the future, so we recommend that you purchase your lot if at all possible."

Burleigh, then the assistant manager of the park, said that was when she began talking to her neighbors.

"It was scary," Burleigh said. "Where do I move this home? It doesn't have wheels underneath it, and I don't have the money to move it if I wanted to."

Manufactured home parks in Oregon are one of the victims of rising property values across the state, said Chuck Carpenter, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Communities of Oregon, a group that represents park owners.

Carpenter said that vacancy rates are an ongoing problem in many parks, and owners are facing the choice: either subdivide the parks and sell off lots or shut down the park and redevelop the property for other uses.

The law, passed by the Legislature in 2001, allows residents to purchase properties in the park, giving tenants a way to stay when the park might otherwise close, Carpenter said.

"For some manufactured (home park) owners in Oregon, the land has become extremely valuable, the rent simply doesn't cover that value anymore," he said.

The owners are required by law to offer the current renters of the property the chance to purchase the lots.

If purchased, the parks are treated as if they were a planned unit development, with a homeowners association taking on management of roads and utilities.

"By the time you figure the tax advantages of them owning their own land, they come out ahead," Carpenter said.

Not all residents in manufactured home parks see it that way.

In the case of Iris Village, the manufactured home park wasn't built to all the normal subdivision requirements, such as street width, sidewalk setbacks and sewer and water specifications.

So when owner Brian Fitterer of Newport Beach, Calif., tried to get residents to purchase their properties, some were leery of purchasing properties with utility systems that, once bought, would be their responsibility to maintain.

Sharon Forsell, 60, a teacher, who lives in Iris Village, told state Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, and Sen. Charles Starr, R-Hillsboro, in a town hall meeting last week that she worried if she purchased her lot and anything happened to the water and sewer systems on her property, she could not afford to fix them.

"Why can't the law require the owner of the park to bring everything up to code before he's allowed to sell it to someone else? I'm on a fixed income. I can't afford to get stuck with this problem," Forsell told Thatcher.

After hearing that residents were organizing against purchasing lots in Iris Village, Fitterer sent a letter to representatives of the Manufactured Home Owners of Oregon saying that he would not require residents of Iris Village to move and that he never intended to require them to move.

Interviewed by phone, Fitterer, who owns 25 manufactured home parks in Oregon and several others in California, Washington and Nevada, said that he was happy to keep the property if people don't want to buy.

"If they want to keep renting, that's fine," Fitterer said. "Obviously, some of these people flunked elementary algebra if they don't see the benefit of owning the land under their homes. Manufactured homes depreciate. The land's the valuable thing, not the home."

To avoid problems in the future between manufactured home park owners and tenants of the parks that are subdivided, the two lobbying groups working with the manufactured home industry in Oregon said this week that they plan to begin working later this year to revise the current law to close loopholes such as those encountered by residents of Iris Village.

They likely will introduce a bill in the next Legislative session, both groups said.

The current law was revised once already in 2003 to forbid park owners from building stick homes in manufactured home parks.

cbolner@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 589-6967