At last week's Northampton County Council meeting, fair housing advocate Jeffrey Zettlemoyer claimed that large-scale developers have entered the mobile or manufactured home market. He noted that when he was employed by Moore Tp, there were 18 mobile home parks. He asserted they are being gobbled up by major developers, who in turn will triple the rent (lot fee). This pushes people with low and moderate incomes out of the Lehigh Valley and into Carbon County, where rents are cheaper.
Later in the meeting, Council member Jeff Warren noted there is state legislation (SB 861 and HB 805) pending that would place a cap on lot fees for manufactured homes. State Rep. Bob Freeman is a sponsor of the House Bill. He said he knows about these increased rents because it happened to his mother. Although the county government has no control over rental fees, he suggested that County Council might wish to consider a resolution supporting the state legislation. "We can't set a cap on these lot fees, but what we can do is send a strong message."
9 comments:
Is he the new Zirinski!?
Let's hope not. But I can understand a local government urging the state to adopt legislation that has a direct impact on its citizens. Historically, the county endorses the County Comm'r of legislation Ass'n of Pa (CCAP) list of legislation it wants passed every year. This proposed cap does not solve the real problem. Many people are being forced to move bc of rising rents. I'd say there are numerous reasons. Yes, there are predatory landlords, but many of them are just passing on rising costs themselves. I'd say the biggest cause of these increases is NOT landlords, but school districts that raise taxes every year. But I certainly would support this resolution.
Blackstone, Warren Buffet, Sam Zell, etc. Equity firms nationwide are buying mobile home parks. Raise rents and use it to buy more parks, often using Fannie/Freddie Mac backed low interest loans.
Ok. Send a “strong” message in a resolution that has little or no teeth, and is not in the per view of a county council person’s job responsibility to his/her constituents or county governance. I respectfully disagree with the resolution thought.
While wasting time on things outside of their lane, why not waste a few hours on Gaza? Better yet, how about passing a resolution in support of Easton PD, who have been outrageously slandered by an elected official?
"per view"?
I understand this is not the function of county government any more than a cease fire resolution. But what is happening has a direct impact on our citizens and is at least partly fueling a very real housing crisis right here in the LV. I believe that, under these circumstances, a resolution supporting a state measure would certainly persuade other LV legislators to sponsor.
It is definitely a problem now. In cities outside of PA, I am seeing mom-and-pop mobile home parks in desirable locations being bought up pretty much exclusively by private equity firms. They raise the rents sky high for a while, then stop renewing leases, forcing everyone to leave so they can redevelop the property into "luxury apartments" or townhouses.
Just recently, two mobile home parks in Lehigh county that were owned by the same local family pretty much their entire existence just sold to some investment firm, and I would bet heavily that they will jack up the rents bigtime to enhance their ROI and possibly look towards redeveloping them into something else other than "affordable" housing in the future.
Some of us remember the drama 20 years ago when the Barbosa mobile home park on Freemansburg Ave sold for development and the residents got screwed, only to have the cleared site sit vacant for years. I know Bob Freeman worked to get new laws passed for providing notice and compensation to displaced mobile home park residents, but it doesn't really solve the issue of finding them similar-cost housing which is in great shortage.
I would never advise anyone to purchase a home on land you either don't own or don't have something like a 99 year lease on that is early in the term, but these mobile home parks do fill a need for many folks on the lower end of the financial spectrum.
Supporting caps is fine, as long as you don't also support all of our warmongering in Ukraine, Israel and the horn of Africa. That would be hypocritical. We should help our needy, first.
This has been happening nationwide, "private-equity" firms have been acquiring large numbers of mobile-home parks & jacking up rents on people who already have modest incomes to pay for housing.
Post a Comment