Bill To Help Mobile-Home Owners Stirs Debate

STEVE LAW
Statesman Journal
March 3, 2007
Mobile-home owners and landlords sat side by side Friday to present their joint approach to aid Oregonians displaced by mobile home park closures.
Lawmakers were so keen to see both sides compromise that 79 of 90 House and Senate members co-sponsored the coalition's proposal, House Bill 2735.
But the first hearing Friday before the House Consumer Protection Committee showed there's still significant opposition, despite 18 months' work to forge a compromise.
The Manufactured Housing Landlord/Tenant Coalition proposal would provide cash payments of $5,000 to $9,000 for mobile home owners forced from their parks. It would extend a $10,000 tax credit and enable more people to qualify. Home owners, whose homes plummet in value once a closure is announced, could leave their homes on site without having to pay thousands of dollars in disposal fees
Sixty-five mobile home parks have closed in Oregon since 1990, said Rep. Jerry Krummel, R-Wilsonville, but 31 of the closures occurred in just the past two years.
As a result, no other bill before the 2007 Legislature has so many co-sponsors, said Krummel, who has championed mobile home owner concerns the past two legislative sessions.
"This is a problem that's not going to go away," said Greg Harmon, the president of Commonwealth Real Estate Services, a major landlord and coalition member. The compromise bill "is the most generous and comprehensive mobile home park closure bill in the United States," he said.
But some mobile home owners say the bill doesn't go far enough.
Ashley Taylor, who lives in an older mobile home park in Silverton called Stardust Village, said the bill won't fully compensate her and her neighbors' losses if the park closes.
"I believe that we should get better compensation," Taylor said. "A lot of these people, if they lose their home, they've got nothing; $5,000 would take them nowhere."
Peter Ferris, a Waldport mobile-home owner, said what is needed is money to help owners buy the land underneath their homes.
State Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, the House committee chairman, said he hopes to produce some relief for displaced mobile home owners. "I don't think that we've got a comprehensive solution to this problem yet," Holvey said. That will take more than just this bill, he said.
"I do pray that they can come to some conclusion," Taylor said, "because newer parks than ours have closed and it hurts thousands and thousands of people that have nowhere else to go."
slaw@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6615