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New alliance rallies mobile home owners |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 06 March 2006 |
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New alliance rallies mobile home owners About a month after she bought a mobile home in Englewood's Shady Haven, Marsha Church learned that the park was being put up for sale.
"I'm going to be out about $47,000," said Church, who put a new kitchen, flooring and other improvements into the home she expected to enjoy year round. "Where am I going to go?"
The plight of Church and thousands of other mobile home owners across Florida, who face eviction because the land beneath their homes is being sold out from under them, has become the rallying cry for a new organization: the Alliance of Park Residents.
On Saturday, more than 200 supporters -- some coming from as far as St. Augustine -- gathered in a Bradenton auditorium to join the alliance and learn more about its cause.
"You are the grass roots," said Travis Moore, a lobbyist hired by the alliance. "The grass roots now have a face and a name."
Alliance organizers, who are from Sarasota and Manatee counties, said they are urging all mobile home residents in Florida who don't own their lots to send letters and e-mails to their legislators. The legislative session begins Tuesday.
"You've got to show these folks what your intentions are," Anthony Pinzone, an organizer of the alliance from Bay Indies in Venice, told the crowd.
The alliance supports a bill filed by state Rep. Nancy Detert, R-Venice.
Under current law, if an owner of a mobile home park wants to sell, the residents must first be given an opportunity to buy the park before it is put on the market.
But that first right of refusal does not apply when a park owner receives an unsolicited offer. That's happening with increasing frequency as land values, especially in coastal Florida, soar and mobile home parks become prime real estate.
The law should regard the property rights of mobile home owners to be as valid as those of the park owners, Detert told the crowd. "I think your rights are not only being abused but crushed. I think it's anti-American."
Detert tried to get the same bill passed last year, but it got mired in committees.
This year, however, more mobile home park associations from across the peninsula have caught word of Detert's effort on their behalf and are spreading the word.
Pinzone hopes they will send busloads of supporters to Tallahassee on March 21, when Detert's bill and a competing bill are expected to be debated in the Senate.
The alliance opposes the other bill, which
. . . , which was filed by state Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton.
His bill encourages residents to negotiate to buy a first right of refusal from park owners. It also requires taxpayers to pay for the relocation of the evicted residents, if their elected officials in cities and counties agree to rezone parks for redevelopment.
Bennett contends that, if cities and counties get a tax windfall by allowing parks to be replaced by more pricey developments, they should take on the burden of helping those residents find other homes.
Detert says the relocation costs should be assumed by the developers who buy the parks. She called Bennett's bill "the developer relief act."
Bennett says Detert's bill is a violation of park owners' property rights.
The Federation of Manufactured Home Owners, a longstanding organization that represents mobile home residents, supports Bennett's bill. The federation says Detert's bill would be unconstitutional, a claim that Detert disputes.
Organizers of the alliance insist that the federation no longer represents the best interests of mobile home residents, who pay it $20 a year in dues. So they have formed their own nonprofit association and set initial dues at $1.
Carolyn Stadier and Glenys Lovett, residents of Camelot Lakes in Sarasota, said they support the alliance because they believe profits are being put ahead of people as mobile home parks are scarfed up by developers across Florida.
"It's always about money," Stadier said.
"There's one word for this," Lovett said. "I call it discrimination." |
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Florida News