Advocates for Howard County mobile home park residents are renewing a push for a law that would give them the first chance to buy the land under their homes if a sale is imminent.
The leaders of People Acting Together in Howard, a church-based community organizing group affiliated with the BUILD coalition in Baltimore, are preparing to meet Monday with Gov. Martin O'Malley to get his support for a possible statewide bill in next year's General Assembly session.
Higher land values are pushing park owners across the country to sell their land to developers, displacing hundreds of working people with modest incomes and retirees who for years have enjoyed spacious, affordable homes on lots they rent. State law requires at least one year's notice of a park closing, but mobile homes are often too old to move, and relocation lots are scarce. Park residents typically own their units, but not the land under them.
"Some of the most affordable housing in Howard County is where you live," the Rev. Carletta Allen of Howard's Locust United Methodist Church in Simpsonville told a group of 150 park residents and members of the group PATH at an Aug. 28 meeting at Deep Run Elementary school, next to the Deep Run Mobile Home Park in Elkridge.
Four of Howard's 12 mobile home parks have closed during this decade, and only the economic slowdown is slowing the trend.
William Kosman, a resident of the sprawling Deep Run Mobile Home Park near Interstate 95 and Route 175, said his family can't move from its three-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot home because of medical bills. He has a child who suffered brain damage from an asthma attack.
"This is the only place in Howard County we can afford to live," he said.
Amy Lamke, another Deep Run resident, said she bought a used mobile home there for herself and her daughter after a divorce. She paid off the house in three years, she said, but is worried about the future.
"I have a nagging fear I will open a letter that says we have to move. I would be forced to abandon my home and lose my money," she said, crying.
"We have a grace period from a downturn in the housing market," PATH volunteer Wendell Thompson told the group. "It's time [that] we can use wisely to protect our future," he added.
The push comes months after a similar mobile home park residents' rights bill applying only to Howard County received virtually unanimous support from the county legislative delegation and the full House of Delegates, but the measure was never taken up by the state Senate. PATH leaders blame mobile home park owners for defeating the measure.
