The dream of retiring and living the rest of your life in a quiet, peaceful mobile home in a nice retirement park is just a falsehood. Once you buy your dream home in a park that offers you peace and tranquility, your park owners change your plans. Greedy, out-of-state or out-of-area owners buy your park and keep increasing the rents so you can no longer live in your home or even sell it because the rent increases have made the home values drop below the market demands. My rents have increased over 60 percent in the last four years at my mobile home park. When you are a senior and living on a pension this is difficult to handle.
Our government decided not to give us a raise for 2010 and 2011. The owners of these large mobile home parks are all big businesses and they are only interested in one thing; the bottom line. They don”t care about older seniors, disabled people or people trying to stay ahead of their medical and pharmacy bills. They just want the rent increases.
What is also upsetting is that we here in Lake County had a chance to settle this problem a few years ago when they tried to get some type of rent control on mobile home parks. Our local supervisors all sided with the landlords and turned it down. They came up with this alternative long-term lease program that was just a why to keep the mobile home owners quiet for a time. This program was a scam. Our county supervisors are always claiming they want to make Lake County a great place to live, attract local business and keep the money spent in the county, etc. This is another scam, the majority of the mobile home parks in Lake County are owned by people either out-of-state or out-of-area. How much of this rent money collected stays in Lake County?
Wake up people. You will all be seniors someday. Keep in mind, when you vote, the politicians who have the senior population problems at the top of their lists.
Remember, the seniors are the people who have paid their taxes, voted on a regular basis, worked for years-to support their families, own their homes and now are being priced out of their homes and headed for a life of poverty or possibly being homeless. Let”s all work together to try and get some type of rent control for mobile home parks in Lake County.
Fred A. Belka Jr. PhD
Lakeport
