Unprotected Mobile Home Parks: Larkspur and unincorporated Marin Incidentally, Novato’s two age-restricted mobile home parks (ages 55+), the MVMCC and Los Robles Mobile Park, provide 35% of the city’s senior housing. MVMCC is a resident-managed community, with a spacious clubhouse and other amenities. There is still controversy as to whether the City should turn the park over to the community for full resident-ownership. When it became apparent that they couldn’t pull together enough money, the City of Novato purchased it to retain its affordability. Winding streets lead through meticulously kept homes studding the hillsides and small valley down to the edge of the marshlands overlooking San Pablo Bay.Ī decade ago, residents tried to raise funds to purchase the land and create a resident-owned cooperative. This age-restricted community of 315 homes in Novato is hidden from the highway off of Nave Drive. While two of Novato’s three mobile home parks, Los Robles Mobile Home Park (age-restricted) and Redwood Mobile Home Park, are privately owned, the City of Novato owns the land on which the third, the Marin Valley Mobile Country Club(MVMCC), is located. The largest number of Marin’s mobile homes in parks are in Novato, which enacted a rent control ordinance in 1997 for mobile home park residents in over 571 homes. The property is now owned and managed by the San Geronimo Valley Affordable Housing Association (SGVAHA), which will keep the units permanently affordable to local residents. The smallest mobile home community in Marin is the 20-unit Forest Knolls Mobile Home Park, which the County purchased in 2015. West Marin: Forest Knolls Mobile Home Park There is also one smaller mobile home and RV park, B-Bar-A Trailer Ranch, in San Rafael, which is also rent-controlled. In 1989, the City of San Rafael passed a mobile home-specific rent control ordinance to protect the residents, and the prior park owner fought the ordinance all the way to the US Supreme Court, which refused to hear its challenge to the ordinance, finally ending the lawsuit in 2014. Marin’s largest mobile home park is Contempo Marin in San Rafael, where about 1,000 residents live in 397 homes surrounding a small lake in a park-like setting. Contempo Marin, owned by Chicago-based Equity Lifestyle Properties, Inc., is noteworthy for its residents’ successful legal battle to achieve rent control for the community, and keep it. A number of mobile or manufactured homes are situated on other properties around the county, many of them providing farmworker housing in West Marin. As clearly described in Oliver's segment, it is an economic trap from which many cannot escape across the country, large investors and investor networks are snapping up mobile home parks for quick profit.Īt least nine mobile home parks tucked in here and there throughout Marin provide house pads for approximately 1,254 homes. This puts the squeeze on the homeowner who is vulnerable to exploitation from unscrupulous property owners who can raise the rent on the pad at will. Mobile homes, which depreciate over time, aren’t really mobile and, once installed, the cost to move the home is generally prohibitive. In most mobile home parks, residents own their homes, but must rent the pad under their homes from the park owner. Comedian/social commentator John Oliver recently aired a well-researched segment of his show, Last Week Tonight, that compellingly presents the common plight of mobile home owners. Mobile home communities provide residents with a certain autonomy in addition to affordability, but that affordability also brings with it unique risks. Is this type of affordable home ownership in peril? While the cost of a mobile home in Marin has increased dramatically with some selling for above $300,000, they still represent a home ownership opportunity in our overheated market ![]() Yet, many seniors and others living on fixed incomes have found affordable homes and community fellowship in mobile home parks.a mobile home in Marin can cost as little as $129,000 to purchase. Marin is home to some of the most expensive real estate in the nation - our median home price topped $1 million in April 2019.
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