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When 83-year-old Kayla Starr moved into Candlewood Park in Talent four years ago, the quiet “55 and older” mobile home park came with minimal maintenance and no amenities, but space rent for an older doublewide was an affordable $515 per month.
Starr, who has lived in the region for four decades, was drawn to the quiet neighborhood along Colver Road with a sense of community and enough space to grw some vegetables to help with monthly food costs.
Four years later, she’s one of thousands of mobile home park dwellers around the state facing exorbitant space rent increases and corporate ownership or management who impose, residents say,...
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First of all, Oregon already passed rent control in 2019. But to the “Free Rent Movement” folks that’s not nearly enough. Now they want to persuade you that mobile home park owners should not even be able to raise rents even in-line with inflation. And their rationale is that old moms and pops never did it so new owners shouldn’t be allowed to either:
“Corporate investment in these parks is really a nationwide issue. … You used to have traditional park owners who were regular people, who maybe lived in the same parks they managed and had a sense of pride in their parks. Residents often thought of park owners as extended family,” Marsh said.
Based on this logic, when you’re Grandmother dies you should be required to maintain their Reader’s Digest subscription and monthly membership to the Lucille Ball fan club. No, the truth is that the “mom and pop quantitative easing” is ending. It’s over. Residents will now have to deal with the real world where nobody operates mobile home parks at a loss anymore and every property is subject to redevelopment if there’s a more profitable use. I remember when a Duke University professor was writing an academic paper on mobile home parks and called me and asked “why do mom and pop owners charge rents that are so ridiculously low?” to which I said “because they view themselves more as philanthropists than landlords, I guess”.
Looks like Oregon wants to get rid of their mobile home parks because, if they pass this, any sane new park owner will simply redevelop into a use that has no such restrictions.
Or is that actually what they’re hoping for behind closed doors? We’ll see …