Soaring Florida Real Estate Costs Put Mobile Home Owners At Risk

With the Florida real estate boom gobbling up mobile home parks across the state, fearful owners congregated in Venice to find ways to protect their homes. Jan McMeans, of the Windmill Manor Mobile Home Park in Manatee County, is one of many Floridians who feel their property is increasingly at risk, according to a story in today’s St. Petersburg Times.

“We feel betrayed. Society has reached a point where profit means more than displacing people. If we can unite, then we’re going to get someone’s attention,” she said.

A large number of the state’s estimated 1.3-million mobile home owners want to change state law so that mobile home owners can more easily prevent developers from taking over their parks. Their aim is to unite as a bloc and defeat legislation they say would limit their rights and cost them money.

The breakdown of the situation:

• While almost all of the citizens own the mobile homes themselves, they rent the land beneath them.
• Under Florida law, they have the right of first refusal if their landlord puts the park on the market. But they have no such right if the developer makes an unsolicited bid.
• They want the same rights whether or not the bid is solicited by the landowner.

Mobile home owners also want the state to increase financial assistance for people displaced by development. Florida law gives an individual $2,750 for a single-wide mobile home and $3,750 for a double-wide — far short of adequate compensation, they say, for people with no place else to go or with mobile homes too old to move.

In Pinellas, where rising real estate values and little undeveloped land have increased pressure on mobile home owners, the pressure is building by the day. Fourteen mobile home parks in the area are in the crosshairs — staring at being bulldozed for development. The Bay Pines Mobile Home Park in Seminole is one of the ones in serious jeopardy, with residents being forced to match a $38 million offer by Monday or prepare to vacate.

Owners of nearby AL-DA-KY Trailer Haven in St. Petersburg are in similar negotiations to buy their park. The Pinellas County Commission will hold a hearing next Tuesday on rezoning another mobile home park, the Golden Lantern Mobile Home Park, for townhomes. Officials are considering proposals to subsidize up to two years’ rent for displaced mobile home owners, but some mobile home residents think this idea does not go nearly far enough. When the two-year subsidy ends, many people would still be unable to pay higher rents, owners say.

A bill sponsored in the Florida State Senate by Nancy Detert of Venice that aimed to confront some of the problems faced by mobile home owners was defeated earlier this year, but the legislator plans to try again this Spring. The main goal of the bill, said Anthony Pinzone, head of the Bay Indies Homeowners Association, is to give residents the right to try to match both solicited and unsolicited offers before the mobile home park land can be sold.

“Tell us the price. Tell us the terms. Tell us the provisions. That’s the meat and potatoes of the bill,” Pinzone said.

Pinzone and his fellow activists praise Detert’s efforts at the same time they condemn the actions of Bradenton Sen. Mike Bennett. He is also working to help home owners, but many believe his actions may instead hurt the effort. Bennett’s proposed legislation would force mobile home owners to pay to have the right of first refusal, while failing to address the right of first refusal for unsolicited offers. The bill also fails to increase the money mobile home owners could get for relocation.

It is hardly new for lower-income homeowners to feel alienated in the past five years. In Connecticut, a district of New London was seized under eminent domain rights, creating national controversy. A similar case is generating attention in Riveria Beach, where wealthy developers are looking to claim land held in downtrodden neighborhoods. People can’t create more land, and with more private citizens and Florida real estate investors competing for the precious remaining locations, it is no surprise that there has been great friction.