Orange County NC Website
4 <br />vacancy rate. There are only 53 vacant mobile home units throughout the County and very few <br />parks have amenities. <br />Commissioner Jacobs said that this report is great and a real improvement in the County <br />Commissioners' knowledge of mobile home parks. He suggested that they might want to get a <br />copy from 20 years ago of mobile home park standards. He said that the occupants are <br />suspicious of the Commissioners asking about their parks and he wants to look at the old report, <br />see how much things have changed, and see if some changes can come voluntarily. He made <br />reference to the abandoned mobile homes and suggested talking to Solid Waste about the <br />possibility of recycling these. <br />Commissioner Jacobs pointed out that some of this report sounded like a difference <br />between the rural ambiance and the urban ambiance. He wonders if the people who did the <br />report were from the city. <br />Frank Clifton said that he worked in a county that had over 3,000 abandoned mobile <br />homes. He is familiar with the state program and there may be about $2,000 of salvageable <br />materials from an abandoned mobile home program, but you have to be careful about asbestos. <br />Commissioner Yuhasz said that he suspects that there is a correlation between the <br />quality of the park and the age of the park. Also, he said that he did not see in the report <br />whether they should be encouraging more parks or not. He would like to address this. <br />Commissioner Hemminger agreed with Commissioner Jacobs about having mobile <br />home standards. She said that getting rid of abandoned homes should be a priority. <br />Commissioner Pelissier agreed with Commissioner Hemminger and said that she has <br />some of the same concerns with the 288 occupied homes in the worst mobile home parks. She <br />asked if there were any funds to help with the low-quality mobile home parks. <br />Commissioner Pelissier also echoed Commissioner Yuhasz's comments about the role <br />of mobile home parks in housing. She said that when the Comprehensive Plan was discussed, <br />the conclusion was that there is probably a need for parks. She said that the County <br />Commissioners need to address whether or not they support the idea of getting rid of mobile <br />home parks in high-end land areas. <br />Commissioner Jacobs said that in the 80's there was a Low and Moderate Income <br />Housing Task Force that asserted that mobile homes were an important component of the <br />housing stock and they should be encouraged as affordable housing. This has been the policy <br />of Orange County ever since. He said that he would fight anyone that tried to change it so that <br />there were no mobile home parks. He said that he was hoping to figure out how to engage the <br />community and the municipalities to help keep this housing stock in the high-end areas, even <br />though the land might be more valuable for something else. He would be interested in knowing <br />what the County has adopted as standards and whether they are being enforced. He would <br />also be interested in talking about an incentive-based removal program for abandoned mobile <br />homes. <br />Frank Clifton said that there are three different types of homes -owners with lots, those <br />that rent space on private property, and those owned by landlords and rent them out. Whatever <br />programs are put in place, some of the issues will be very complicated. <br />Nannie Richmond said that she agreed with Frank Clifton and most people cannot even <br />afford a mobile home in Orange County. She said that if they put more pressure on park <br />owners to get these occupants to do a better job of keeping up their homes, then that might <br />help. <br />Barbara Mull said that when the advisory board first started looking at these homes, they <br />thought about the high use value on these parks, and they did talk about having homeowners <br />becoming joint owners in the park. <br />