Settling into a comfort zone

An electric fireplace flickers in Etta Riedl’s living room. It warms the area in front of her large Oriental rug, which is surrounded by formal floral-print sofas.

There’s the china cabinet and the gold-rimmed bar cart and a cozy TV room with a recliner. She has a screened porch (“like another living room,” she says) and a yard to dote on all spring and summer.

“I like my home, I really do,” says Riedl, 70. “I’ve made it into a home.”

What Riedl has turned into a home is actually the Rodney Dangerfield of housing — a 30-year-old, 1,300-square-foot mobile home just west of downtown Spokane.

“I’ve really worked hard on it,” says Riedl, who has lived at Sans Souci West Mobile Home community for nearly a year. “It was just an old, old mobile that nobody but me would’ve bought.”

For years, mobile homes — don’t you dare call them trailers — have been the butt of jokes. They’ve been snubbed as cheap, trashy housing that always seem to fall victim to Mother Nature’s wrath.

But the tide is changing on mobile-home communities as more and more people discover the inexpensive housing option can be a perfect living arrangement. Many such developments are situated on prime real estate, they have clubhouses and pools and other amenities, and they offer attractive, close-knit neighborhoods that are particularly appealing to widows and retirees.

Spend a little time at the Sans Souci, French for “carefree,” and you’ll never think of mobile homes in the same way again.

The 218 homes hug the banks of the Spokane River, on the site of the old Natatorium Park. It’s been a mobile-home community since 1969, bBut many folks in town don’t even know it’s there.

“We like to keep it a secret,” says manager Ann Jewell, who has lived there for 15 years.

The homes at Sans Souci may be “mobile,” but hardly anybody ever moves them anywhere. Some homeowners have added elaborate decks or carports or front porches. All of the units must be well-maintained to follow the community’s rules.

Residents of the Sans Souci must be 55 or older, which is the rule at several area mobile- and manufactured-home communities.

One of those is the Cascade Manufactured Home Community, which has been just off the Pullman Highway for more than 30 years.

“It’s the surroundings and the things we have to offer” that makes Cascade special, says manager Mary Carlton.

Parks like Sans Souci and Cascade have clubhouses hosting a range of activities, from shuffleboard to haircuts to sewing groups and potluck feasts.

Having a clubhouse, a central gathering spot, boosts the sense of community within a park.

“In the suburbs, there’s not necessarily much interaction,” says John Fraser Hart, a geography professor at the University of Minnesota who has studied mobile-home living. “In a mobile home park, you can’t avoid it.”

Because of that neighborliness, snow-bird residents have no worries about packing up and moving south for the winter, says Bette Lyn Kelly, with the Shenandoah Forest Park manufactured-home community in Mead.

“They feel very comfortable and safe leaving their homes,” Kelly says. “Most of our tenants do get to know people very well.”

While mobile-home living is generally carefree, it’s not entirely without worry. Community residents own their homes but they rent the space on which they sit. And since the parks are often on pricey land, there is always a chance that it could be sold. Perspective renters should learn the status of the land in the park and what protection they have in case of sale, Hart says.

Mobile-home dwellers should also be prepared to part with some of their belongings, especially if they’re coming from a bigger home.

At Sans Souci, for example, the homes range from 720 square feet to just under 2,000 square feet, Jewell says.

Riedl had already been living at the Shenandoah for 11 years before deciding she wanted to be in a seniors-only park, so she didn’t have much to get rid of.

“I love it because we’re all seniors,” she says. “We have such an active clubhouse. We play pinochle and bingo. There’s pizza night. We have coffee every morning …

“It’s just a great place to live.”