I wish I had the words.I wish I knew what to say about the fires that have ravaged so much of California. Many older people lived in the Oakridge mobile home park, where this photo was taken.
Such parks have long offered elderly working class residents of limited means a way to maintain independence and dignity while rents and home prices throughout the state rose to unlivable levels. Once a mobile home is paid off (they're cheap), residents pay only space rents, which might come to only a few hundred dollars a month, thanks to California's rent control laws. A comparably-sized apartment might cost $1500 a month or more.
Now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and others are talking about stricter fire safety codes for mobile homes. That idea may make sense at first. But only new homes can be built to high standards, and the kind of people who found a refuge in a place like Oakridge cannot afford to buy new. It simply isn't feasible to ask all residents of California mobile home parks to upgrade their residences.
A small new single-wide home constructed to a very high standard can run $50,000; the last time I looked, one could still find a double-wide in places like Oakridge for roughly $25,000. Even though the proposed new standards will apply only to new homes, the park owners will discourage or disallow older homes. An upgrade requirement will ruin the lives of many, many thousands of lower-income people, most of whom are past working age. They certainly cannot expect any financial help from our cash-strapped state.
People seem to be under the impression that all Californians are wealthy. Not so. A lot of folks outside the state chuckled at the photo of the escapee on a Segway. But that guy is the exception, not the rule.
What a catastrophe. I wish I had the words.
6 comments:
Pushes buttons.
Kagel Canyon, Sun Valley, North Hollywood, Newhall... where I "grew up," went to public schools for 12 years, rode horses and motorcycles in the mountains . . .
Now I'm 62, one of those older folks, I guess. So I can relate to that reality.
About five years in a mobile home park during those years too. Friend's trailer had a fire. Pretty much ruined. Garden hoses kept it from spreading to nearby "units" (they were homes to us). Back of his to back of another one couldn't have been more than 10 feet.
Gov. S-Nazi is more than a vile idiot, but I'll stop on that subject.
News says worst fire(s) in almost 50 years. Strange I can't recall the one(s) they refer to; maybe a very vague object in my mind, like when you're not sure if it's your imagination drumming it up. Dad and neighbors discussing how we were safe (in mobile home park, no less) but people were alert and tracking the news.
12' wide and 50' long, bay windows made the living room wider. The patio was almost as big and we had a fairly decent woodshop out there, just for hobby. Before that, what seemed like a pretty big electric train layout. Swimming pool, miniature golf course, four long streets to ride our bikes on, playground with tetherball, basketball and handball along with swings and monkey bars and such.
Retired folks, engineers, tool and die makers, school teachers, a preacher, folks who owned small businesses, factory workers, a policeman (friend's dad, he would take us for short rides in the police car and lie on the radio about what he was doing.)
Like trailer parks, civilization is a very fragile thing. Take care.
Greetings from Gary in provincial Thailand.
The reason California might have been previously slightly insulated from the economic woes is there is a whole aging generation of residents that bought their properties for a fraction of what they cost today, even with the lowering of home values.
This allowed them tap into their home equity line.
However, the home equity buffer is ending. It was just in the past year that the amount of equity owned in a home for all US residents dropped below 50% for the first time since World War II ???
That drop may be even more noticeable in California as inflated prices have come back down to earth.
If the bank tells you your home is worth 500,000 dollars, and then a year later it "worth" 400,000 dollars, that is a 100,000 dollars of lost value.
California has also benefited from successful Asian business people coming over and buying into real estate. That is drying up to.
At some point, the U.S. will need to promote made in america products again, even though this will anger the Chinese and perhaps other countries as well.
Didn't the US make a ton of those "Pods" after the New Orleans flood? I wonder if they are up to code.
They might come in handy in California about now.
http://DailyPUMA.com
"....the U.S. will need to promote made in america products again..."
To do that, alessandro machi, America needs a manufacturing base. We have little of that left anymore. A lot of our former manufacturing base is now over seas. I agree that we need to do this. But first we would have to have some start up money to get some manufacturing capabilities back.
bert in Ohio
In most cases pertaining to manufacturing housing communities you would be correct in your assumptions, however, in this case you are incorrect. As far as most mhp's (Mobile Home Parks) the CA state average space rent is roughly 300-350 however this particular parks space rent is in the $1200.00 per month range. The houses start around $125,000. and go up from there. This park operator has found ways to circumvent Los Angeles's Rent control ordinances for years.
This park was considered a "High End Park" the funny thing is the losses that the homeowners experienced was no greater loss than the poorer folks that lost their homes to fire just 1 month earlier 1 mile away at Sky Terrace. More than likely the people at Sky Terrace lost more due to their own economic situation, many of the folks at Sky Terrace were too poor to afford homeowners insurance, so their loss was Total.
I personally suffered damage from last month’s fire, and I agree that there are no words that can describe the loss one experiences, or the sorrow one feels for them. I can not remember ever a day when over 500 homes were lost in one day in Los Angeles.
Glenn Bell
President
Neighborhood Friends
Manufactured Homeowners Advocate
So sorry for your loss, Glenn.
And Alessandro, I wondered that same thing:
"Didn't the US make a ton of those 'Pods' after the New Orleans flood? I wonder if they are up to code.
They might come in handy in California about now."
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