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To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41796-2002Dec26.html Area Housing Boom Drives Out Mobile Homes By Mary Otto The white gate at Holiday Mobile Estates in Jessup reads "Maryland's Finest Mobile Home Community." The place is surrounded by trees, seemingly deep in the forest. Joe Parinchak parked his 1965 mobile home here when it was new, and he has stayed. Inside, his wood-paneled home is like a snug old Chris-Craft that boasts a place for everything and everything in its place. Bedroom cubbyholes for shoes, a neat cabinet over the kitchen window for cans of stew. "I've enjoyed it," said Parinchak, 80, a retired Army man from Fort Meade. His little home is paid for, and the $445 he pays each month covers his rent of the lot and utilities. The place feels like his safe berth in a world that has changed a lot since he arrived. Since the end of World War II, mobile homes have served as low-cost housing for retirees, young families and working people. And in the Washington area, where the shortage of affordable housing has become a crisis, this private-sector solution has been perfect for a small segment of the population. But Washington's pricey market and expensive development are pressing in on Parinchak's oasis of affordable housing. He can still hear hoot owls at night, but the sprawling Arundel Mills mall that lies beyond the trees epitomizes the powerful economic forces bearing down on area mobile home parks. In some parts of the nation, by comparison, mobile homes have been booming. Their numbers nationally have almost doubled since 1980 and grew by nearly 20 percent in the '90s. In the Washington area, however, the number of mobile homes has been falling, after some growth in the '80s. And the decline came even as the population grew rapidly. In the 1990s, the region added 293,000 housing units, but few of them were targeted to low-income families. And lost in all that development was the future of mobile homes. As the Washington suburbs continue to sprawl, once-outlying mobile home parks have been engulfed. "Displacement is the word," said Bruce Savage, a spokesman for the Arlington-based Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade association. "The owners can't rationalize keeping these little communities running when they can take the money and run." St. Mary's County lost more than 1,000 manufactured homes in the 1990s, according to the 2000 Census. A number of parks there were overtaken by commercial and suburban growth. "One turned into our local Wal-Mart," said Dave Chapman of the county Department of Planning and Zoning. In Fairfax County, another Wal-Mart rose at the site of the former Oak Grove Trailer Park on Route 1. Calvert and Charles counties each lost more than 100 manufactured homes in the past decade, according to the 2000 Census. And on an island between the northbound and southbound lanes of Route 1 in North Laurel, a "for sale" sign is planted on land that in 2000 was host to three mobile home parks. Across the county line in Anne Arundel, zoning laws and competition for land have placed a ceiling on the growth of the parks, people in the business said. "The builders have bought up all the lots if they are buildable," said Rollan Grice, a salesman at Chesapeake Mobile-Modular Homes in Millersville. The lack of space for new mobile homes "has sure stifled off affordable housing," he said, taking away "an easy way of solving a housing issue for that guy who makes $20,000 to $50,000." As the Washington area has become more affluent -- median household income is $64,000 -- lower-income families have been forced to move farther into the outer suburbs, double up with friends and relatives and search for months to find something they can afford. And as property values rise and developers lean toward high-end homes, mobile home parks are less and less welcome, said Keith Martin, whose family has run Holiday Mobile Estates for four decades. "A mobile home park might as well be a leper colony," Martin said. The park has grown to its limits and includes more than 400 spaces, from Parinchak's vintage model in space A-1 to deluxe double-wide "manufactured homes," like those occupied by Audrey Palmer in the park's "new section." Palmer's home has a pitched roof and high ceilings, an eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms and two baths, including one with a king-size tub. Palmer and her family bought the home for $59,000. And even the fancier models, at $70,000 and higher, sell for roughly half Anne Arundel County's median house price. But the pressure to put this land to other uses is real. "You could put 500 townhouses here," Martin said. His father, Hershel Martin, 73, said he has turned down millions for his small kingdom. "It's been 40 years of my life getting these spaces and buildings," he said of his 100-acre park, which is home to roughly 1,000 people, including retirees, workers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Security Agency, police officers, teachers and about 200 children. With monthly payments on newer mobile homes ranging from $200 to $500 plus the roughly $450 "ground rent" for a lot, residents manage to keep their housing costs below $1,000 a month. "I love it," said Michelle Carey, whose double-wide home accommodated a full-size, lavishly decorated Christmas tree. The payments and ground rent are low enough that she can afford to stay home with her 4-year-old daughter while her husband works as a construction supervisor. "It would be a little harder with house payments," she said. She is proud of the well-maintained park with its trees, pond and playground. Her parents live in the park, too. "You hear 'mobile home park,' and people call you trailer trash. But we're not like that," she said. The long-standing social stigma endures. Mobile home owners continue to have more trouble getting financing. Many are poorer than the buyers of traditional "stick-built" housing. And their homes are unsecured by land, making them personal property rather than real estate. But this housing niche has changed dramatically. And projects such as New Colony Village in Elkridge could be the shape of things to come. The gated community, built on land zoned for mobile home use and located directly across the street from an older mobile home park, features one- and two-story Colonial-style houses, with features such as dormers, shutters and expansive front porches. Like the mobile homes in the older park, these places came in on trucks. But unlike them, the new houses are assembled from as many as four sections. Each costing roughly $100,000, about 60 percent of the median in Howard, all 236 have been sold. "It has been a slam-dunk success," salesman Terry Riley said. Building eight units to an acre helped keep prices down. And the county even bought 11 units to add to its affordable housing inventory. The need for affordable units is acute in Howard, where the median household income stands at nearly $70,000 and service workers sometimes must be bused in from Baltimore because there are so few places they can afford to live. But when it comes to mobile homes as an answer, there is an abiding ambivalence. One law passed by the County Council this fall allows an existing mobile home park to expand to replace spaces lost when another park closes. But another allows townhouses and apartments to be built on land zoned for mobile homes, provided that the owners set aside at least 15 percent of the units as affordable housing. Mobile homes don't fit with the county's vision for Route 1, said Vernon Gray, a former council member who pushed for the law. "I was trying not to build any more mobile home parks along Route 1," he said. County Housing Administrator Leonard Vaughan said that local officials recognize the need for affordable housing and that mobile homes "provide a much-needed part of the affordable housing supply." But, he said, "housing is so costly now, a mobile home might not be the highest and best use for the land." Still, Nancy Boyd, 80, a retired cashier living on about $1,500 a month, is grateful for her place on Route 1. She said the $506 ground rent she pays at Capitol Mobile Home Park makes life livable. Her home is paid for, and although a hip replacement required her to leave her job at McDonald's, she still manages to earn $100 a week to supplement her income by serving meals at the nearby Elkridge Senior Center. Sometimes her daughter tries to get her to move to New York, but Boyd tells her: "Betty Jean, I've got a place of my own. I can take care of myself. I'll stay where I am." In a yellow and white double-wide with a wheelchair ramp in Hanover, proud and scrappy Dollie Keech and her grown daughters, Gloria Keech and Pam Wadford, look back on nearly four decades of life at Chesapeake Mobile Court. Dollie Keech, who is in fragile health, has lived in the park since her late husband retired from the Army. "This park is not the most beautiful park in the world," she said from her snug armchair, "but it is home." The mother and daughters have spent years advocating for themselves and other mobile home owners, sometimes against intimidating odds. They lobbied until they saw a Maryland law passed to protect mobile home owners against summary rent increases and evictions. They have helped run a county-wide mobile home homeowners association. And over the years, they have turned out to support the residents of threatened parks. It has not been an easy road, with the taunts of "trailer trash," and "the little kids marching out there with signs to ban the mobile homes," said Wadford, in tears. They haven't given in. Sometimes a rumor will fly that their own park is closing, but Dollie Keech insists that she will die here and her children and her grandchildren will remain after her. Outside the park, the march of the $300,000 houses continues. Keech sees them go up, then watches as the new owners move in. And it's not too long, she said, before she hears the complaints, that the quiet old mobile home park at the bend in the road is holding back the otherwise inevitable rise in property values. Database editor Dan Keating contributed to this report. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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