Stand Taken to Preserve Affordable Housing in Broward
As mobile home parks disappear throughout the Broward County, Pembroke Park town has taken a stand to preserve this form of affordable housing.
There are 11 mobile home parks within its 1.6-square-mile boundaries, more per capita than in any other municipality in the Broward housing market. Town voters agreed in 2000 to keep it that way, approving an ordinance requiring that any proposal to convert the parks be put on the ballot and approved by at least 65 percent of the vote.
“We are trying to preserve mobile homes by making rezoning as difficult as possible,” said Town Manager Bob Levy. “It’s the basic principle upon which the town was founded. For 50 years, it’s been part of our credo.”
Not everyone agrees it should be.
John Holiday, owner of 18-acre Holiday Park, said the ordinance is unconstitutional because it infringes on property owners’ rights. Although he has no immediate plans to rezone, he said he might challenge the conversion ordinance at some point.
“Wouldn’t you call that discrimination?” Holiday said. “You own a piece of land, they continue to raise your [property taxes] and you cannot change the land use.”
Mayor Emma Shoaff, whose family owns Green Acres mobile home park, where she lives, said Holiday knew about the ordinance when he bought his park two years ago. But she said she understands people sometimes want to get out of the mobile home park business.
“My family … might look to rezone some day,” said Shoaff, a mobile home supporter. “So, I might have to fight my own family.”
The ordinance was designed to protect the character of Pembroke Park, which has more than 6,000 Florida mortgage holders/owners and is located along a stretch of Hallandale Beach Boulevard between Interstate 95 and Southwest 56th Avenue. It was proposed at a time when the county’s legislators unsuccessfully tried to force the town to annex four nearby neighborhoods.
Over the past three years, more than 83 mobile home parks have closed in the Florida housing market, including nine in Broward, according to the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
Soaring home prices during the recent real estate boom had developers coveting mobile home parkland to replace it with more lucrative condo, townhouse and single-family home projects.
In Davie, town officials were so concerned about mobile home park conversions that they recently enacted a moratorium. Hallandale Beach is considering one as well. Pembroke Park officials say their law gives peace of mind to residents, mainly seniors on fixed incomes.
“It’s as safe as it can legally be,” Levy said.
Carolyn Homerding, 55, moved to the Bamboo Lakes mobile home park in February after the Hollywood park she had lived in for two years was sold. Homerding, who is unemployed and disabled, couldn’t move her $7,000 mobile home because it was too old. And she can’t afford to even consider a Florida home mortgage on anything else.
The ordinance here “makes me feel a little bit secure,” Homerding said. “When I had to move, it was devastating. I didn’t know where I was going to live.”
Her neighbor, James A. Lawless, 75, also praised the ordinance, saying: “We don’t want developers in here. I’m very happy here.”
Town commissioners are especially sympathetic to the cause because most live in and operate parks. Shoaff and her family own Green Acres; Commissioner Howard Clark owns Bamboo Paradise; and Commissioner Gina Cohen manages Bamboo Lakes.
“I feel like we are the luckiest people in the world,” Cohen said. “If we didn’t have a commission that was pro-mobile home, we wouldn’t have [this ordinance].
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