Robert and Laurie McCormick found an answer to their housing needs five years ago, purchasing an existing mobile home in a west Visalia mobile-home park.
"We paid $1,500 for it," Laurie McCormick said.
But the bargain has lost its luster for the couple and their 6-year-old son, Matthew. The rent for the space where the home is parked and utility payments at Rancho Fiesta Mobile Estates have ballooned from $400 in 2003 to more than $600 today - with another increase looming next month.
"It's rising so fast now, there's no way we can keep up with it," said Robert McCormick, whose mobile-home park is on Tulare Avenue near Akers Street.
The family has nowhere else to go, he said. Apartments and fixed-foundation single-family homes are way too expensive for the working parents.
And their "mobile" home - a Champion Model 975 that's at least 40 years old - isn't going anywhere, the Visalia City Council was told Tuesday afternoon by Bruce Stanton, a San Jose-based attorney who represents the Visalia Mobile Home Task Force, a citizens' group of mobile-home residents.
Too expensive to move
Mobile homes are rarely moved once they are installed in a park. Because of this immobility, Stanton said, residents are at the mercy of park owners who can pretty much charge whatever they wish. And space has become more expensive as old-line mobile-home residents compete with a new wave of candidates forced into cheaper housing options by the two-year economic slump.
"Families buy the home, Stanton said. "They are homeowners, not renters. All they rent is the space it is on."
Lobbying for reforms
More than 300 members of the group lobbied the council Tuesday for reforms to protect them from excessive space-rent increases.
"Our rent rate is going up again, from $389 to $404 on Oct. 1," said Thomas Alvarez, 58, who lives in the well-established Gold Star Mobile Estates in the 2100 block of South Sante Fe Street in Visalia near Walnut Avenue. "We have to pay utilities on top of that."
Next-door neighbor James O'Banion, 65, is feeling the squeeze.
"I have a fixed income," O'Banion said. "Any increase will hurt."
Park owners and their representatives say rent control doesn't work and will lead to needless and expensive litigation - a "cottage industry" for attorneys.
"The city of Clovis has rent control [on mobile-home parks]," said Dave Evans of Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, a park-owner industry group. "They had one rent-control complaint, and it cost the city $1 million. They had to settle for $500,000."
Visalia Mayor Jesus Gamboa said he plans to visit Visalia's parks in the next few weeks to see for himself what needs to be done - a promise that drew a wave of applause from the packed council chamber.
"We have to get out there," Gamboa said.
Other council members agreed that more study is needed, but Councilwoman Amy Shuklian cautioned that the city must establish the cost of a consultant in light of current belt-tightening of city budgets. Councilman and Vice Mayor Bob Link noted that the city has taken on this problem before, to little effect.
"I was here five years ago when we tried to deal with this," Link said. "It's a no-win situation."
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