Preview:
BOISE, Idaho — For more than a decade, Gary Gallipeau has called Dee Mar Mobile Home Park home.
The Garden City park was established in the 70s. Fifty years later, developers are reimagining and revamping the land into multi-family housing apartments.
Gallipeau said everyone living at the park got eviction notices in January.
“[The developers] even offered us a deal,” he said. “For every month early that we moved out, they would refund us two months of rent, but we had to take our trailers.”
But Gallipeau said moving those mobile homes is more difficult than it seems. Only about three or four of Dee Mar’s mobile homes were built...
Our thoughts on this story:
Here’s a new take on the “victim” mentality that all American appear to share. In 1976 HUD kidnapped the mobile home manufacturing industry and declared that any home that did not have a HUD seal could not be brought into a mobile home park. Now they’re closing down Dee Mar and the pre-HUD homes can’t be relocated and the tenants are blaming the park owner for this.
At the end of the day, Gallipeau is less concerned about moving out and more concerned about not getting compensated. He said some of the trailers are valued at upwards of $80,000. “There’s no fair or just compensation for property that we own,” he said. “The developers own the land, we own the trailers.”
The fact that owners of pre-HUD homes do not know (or even research) the ability to relocate a pre-HUD home is not the responsibility of the park owner. If this tenant wants to sue anyone, the appropriate party would be HUD. Good luck on that.
Because of this reality, that’s one more reason that mobile home park rents need to go up in-line with market forces as the problems at Dee Mar on relocating homes will be shared with any park that is redeveloped.
One final note: don’t try to tell me a pre-HUD home is worth $80,000. Nobody is buying that.

