Have Questions but Don’t Know Where to Turn?

If you have questions or concerns about your mobile home, from rules to maintenance and warranty information, HCD can help.

Their website features answers to questions regarding Purchasing & Relocation, Installation & Setup, and Warranty Information as well as tips on how to care for your mobile home. This is your home, your lifestyle choice, be informed.

Visit HUD’s Website for more information.

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/housing/rmra/mhs/mhcqa

 

Make Sure Your Pet is in Compliance with the Rules & Regulations of the park

Pets become a part of your family; often referred to lovingly as a son or daughter. Due to this you are likely to overlook some of their not so angelic behavior, but be wary you are ultimately held responsible for the actions of your pet.

As a pet owner and a park resident you are responsible for cleaning up your pets waste in a reasonable time even if it is in your yard. It is also up to you to make sure that your pet is kept in your lot and away from other residents who may not wish to be around animals. If your pet gets out and attacks another resident or a pet of another resident you will be held responsible. It can even result in your removal from the park after services of proper notices.

When looking into purchasing a pet you MUST first check with your park. The MRL’s allow a park to restrict, within reason, certain large and aggressive large dog breeds. They may also set restrictions on the weight and number of pets you may have in your mobile home. Service animals may be exempt from some of these restrictions.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), holding up the rules of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), issued a notice reaffirming that housing providers must provide reasonable accommodations to person with disabilities who require assistance animals. ADA regulations define “service animal” narrowly as any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. The revised regulations specify that “the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition.”

The reason behind the move from Senior to All Age parks.

The typical mobile home parks built in the Southern California region in the 1960’s and 70’s were build as senior parks to attract persons age 55 and older.  The typical home buyers were looking for a more carefree lifestyle that reduced home maintenance responsibilities and neighbors with similar interests.  Most communities provided clubhouses where residents gathered for various activities.

In 1988 the Federal Government Amended the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination of the basis of disability and familial status.  With the act, Congress intended to also preserve housing specifically designed to meet the needs of senior citizens and exempted from the law’s familial status requirements “housing for older persons” provided that the facilities provided “significant services and facilities for seniors and provided that:

• HUD has determined that the dwelling is specifically designed for and occupied by elderly persons under a Federal, State or local government program, or
• It is occupied solely by persons who are 62 or older or,
• It houses at least one person who is 55 or older in at least 80 percent of the occupied units, and adheres to a policy that demonstrates intent to house persons who are 55 or older.

As a result of the change in housing laws and the added requirement to provide “significant services and facilities”in order to qualify as a “senior facility”, many mobile home parks determined that they could not qualify as a senior facility and changed to all age communities.  The Housing for Older Persons Act of 1995 (HOPA) got rid of the initial requirements for “significant services and facilities” for senior housing, however, by that time the demand for housing for families began to provide further incentives for mobile home parks to transition from senior to all-age communities.

The History of the trailer and mobile home park lifestyle.

Trailer camps began appearing in the late 1930’s and sprung up around vacation destinations near beaches and deserts.  These camps were designed as a temporary land use to provide lodging for people towing “caravans” and travel trailers.  These parks and were usually under 100 spaces and typically provided bathrooms, showers and utility hook ups.  As time passed, these trailer parks either disappeared or made way for new development, or they became long-term housing for people living in small travel trailer or singlewide units.  In the Inland Empire agriculture areas these travel trailer parks became popular for migrant workers and remain so today.

Most of the “typical mobile home parks” in the region were built in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Like the older trailer camps, many were built as interim land uses on former farmland, with temporary conditional use permits (CUP) from local cities and counties to build the parks.  One of the primary incentives to build a mobile home park was the ability to realize income from the land to help pay property tax.  Prior to the adoption of Proposition 13 in 1978 California tax assessors taxed property on the basis of its highest and best use.  Farmland was being developed for housing and the zoning master plan set aside blocks of land for future commercial and industrial development.  It is common to find mobile home parks developed on major highways in commercial and industrial areas of cities.

The parks built in the 1960’s and 70’s focused on providing larger spaces for new doublewide mobile homes and a lifestyle to attract retirees.  Clubhouses, pools, shuffleboard, a place to store RV’s, and organized activities topped the list of amenities.  Retirees could sell their stick built home and purchase a new mobile home leaving behind maintenance and yard work and enjoy the modern facilities at the new mobile home park.  In the mid-60’s a typical new doublewide mobile home sold for $15,000 in a new park and rents were $75 or less – about half the cost of a new site built home of similar size – but with a lot more amenities and literally worry free.

In 1981, the last new manufactured housing community was built in Orange County.  The manufactured homes had evolved in design and quality to match site-built homes and with ground level installation and site-built garages; the neighborhood took on the look of a site-built project, but with “country club” amenities and an attractively affordable price tag.

A few new parks have been built in the Inland Empire in the past ten years, but, with today’s land and improvement costs, building new rental/land lease manufactured housing communities today is not feasible.