Mobile home residents face eviction

BAYVIEW – A day after eviction notices went up on trailer doors at View of the Bay Mobile Home Park, Skip Wilcox was calling state agencies, trying to line up relocation assistance for the park’s elderly and low-income residents.

Without help, “some of the people there will be homeless,” predicted Wilcox, a former tenant who moved out last year.

About eight families remain in the 36-lot mobile home park, which will close Sept. 30. Though most tenants started making plans a year ago, when the first closure notices went out, resident Jessie White said she has few options.

“This is my only home, and all my money is invested in it,” said White, who is disabled. “I don’t know if I can afford to move it. … It’s pretty scary.”

Rapid development is taking a toll on Idaho’s smaller, older mobile home parks. The trend alarms affordable housing advocates, who note park tenants are often senior citizens and disabled.

“It’s an affordable housing issue,” said Connie Hogland, chairwoman of the Governor’s Manufactured Home Park Advisory Committee, which is charged with finding ways to help tenants through the transition when parks are sold.

Idaho has 1,700 mobile home parks, according to state figures. About 20 are closing each year.

View of the Bay is typical of parks being converted to other uses. The lots, which rent for $250 to $300 a month, have sweeping views of Lake Pend Oreille and surrounding mountains. Former owner and Hayden developer Bob Holland, who sent out the original eviction notices last year, planned to build high-end condos on the site. The land is too valuable to let it remain a mobile home park, he said in an earlier interview.

The park was sold to KDB Investments LLC in early August. On Wednesday, tenants received letters indicating that the new owners would stick to Holland’s timeline for closing the park.

Eric Sachtjen, an attorney for KDB Investments, said plans for the property haven’t been finalized. He declined to discuss who the company’s partners are, but Brian Main, a Spokane developer, and James Darling, of Liberty Lake, are listed on KDB’s corporate filing with the state of Idaho.

Sachtjen said he had been in touch with park tenants but didn’t know if any extensions to the Sept. 30 deadline would be granted.

White, however, said park tenants tried to reach the new owners when the sale went through but their calls were not returned. Three weeks elapsed – time that tenants could have been making plans, she said.

White has tried to sell her 1967 mobile home for $15,000, but prospective buyers didn’t want the trailer without a space, she said. Later this week, she’ll learn if the home can be moved. Older homes must go through inspections before they can be relocated to make sure they meet health and safety standards.

Five Southern Idaho families faced homelessness last year when a mobile home park closed in Garden City, near Boise. At the last minute, a state block grant provided up to $90,000 in emergency funds to help families update their mobile homes so they could be moved. For the homes that couldn’t be moved, the grant money paid for apartment-rental deposits.

The governor’s task force has discussed creating a housing trust fund, which would help pay for mobile home relocations, said state Rep. Phylis King, D-Boise. It could also help tenants pay off mortgages on trailers that are too old to be moved and have to be razed.

King would also like to see tenants get the first option to buy mobile home parks when they come up for sale. Task force members expect to complete their report by the end of the year, so the recommendations can be sent to the 2008 Legislature.

Charlene and Jack Soppit need help sooner. The couple – he’s 77 and she’s 70 – have lived at View of the Bay Mobile Home Park for more than 30 years. Both still work to pay for medications.

Charlene Soppit has pored over the family budget. The couple can only afford to pay $350 a month in housing, she said. But they aren’t likely to find a rental in Kootenai County for that price.

“We don’t have anyplace to go,” she said.