![]() That’s because of a state law passed in Florida in 1994 to maintain affordable housing and protect property rights. Palm Beach County officials can’t keep the older mobile homes out even if they don’t meet wind standards. Owners of older homes, some built in the 1970s and not compliant with current wind standards, left their rigs at the park. Some who owned mobile homes in good condition sold them or or just left the park. A single-family development is taking its place. The 1,500 residents in the 55-and-older park were told they had to leave by this summer. Many of the older mobile homes coming into A Garden Walk - and other parks in Palm Beach County - are from Hollywood Estates, a mobile home park closed by the Seminole Tribe in Hollywood, Ayotte said. Park owners could then charge the $620 monthly fee as well as rent the mobile home, he said. The park owners would be glad to see him leave so they could put in their own mobile home, he said. Sankowski owns his trailer and pays the park $620 a month. “Those are just cosmetic changes,” said Sankowski. Sankowski acknowledged that contractors were busy on ladders fixing roofs and patching walls. Wooden beams showed termite damage in another. Exposed wiring was visible on a few more. Stepping around a mobile home with wrinkled aluminium siding and brown tape on broken windows, Sankowski said there are about two dozen such beat-up homes that have been recently brought into the park. The need is growing for affordable housing,” he said. Buying parks in Palm Beach County - such as Wal-Mart replacing the 70 mobile homes in Sunshine Village in Palm Springs three years ago - is popular because land here is so valuable. While mobile home parks likely will become increasingly attractive to developers, any idea they are going extinct is greatly exaggerated, Ayotte said. There’s always someone who will pay, no matter what the condition of the structure,” said A Garden Walk resident Ed Sankowski, 61, who is president of the homeowner’s association. “Housing is so expensive in Palm Beach County. About 24 mobile home owners in Hi Acres Mobile Home Park in suburban Palm Beach Gardens must leave to make room for extending Congress Avenue from Alternate A1A.Ī Garden Walk mobile home park residents say beat-up mobile homes are being brought into their park on Military Trail near Palm Beach Gardenas rentals.Residents of Royal Manor Estates senior mobile-home park in Boynton Beach gathered at the community’s clubhouse last month to discuss concerns about alleged harassment by the park’s management company.The 120 residents, some who have lived there 30 years, have been told by management they can stay at least two more years. Suni Sands, on 10 prime waterfront acres in Jupiter east of A1A, recently sold for $16 million.Lago Palma and Whitehaven are not the only mobile home parks where residents have either left or are being forced out of their parks. “And we mowed the lawns,” said Bob White, 64, one of the four White brothers and two sisters in the family who grew up in Lake Park. That included water, sewer and garbage collection. When the last Whitehaven residents who owned their mobile homes left early this spring, they were paying about $400 monthly. Planned are 351 apartments and 60,000 square feet of retail and medical office space. Jupiter-based FLF 1030 LLC bought the property this year. Military Trail was a dirt road when Bob and Loretta White opened the 131-resident park in the early 1960s on 29 acres of mango farms. Such a developer sale is what happened to the residents of Whitehaven Senior Adult Mobile Home Park in Jupiter. “Mobile home parks are golden, especially now,” York said. Municipalities might welcome the change because commercial development would bring more tax revenue than a mobile home park, said Marie York, president of Jupiter-based York Solutions, a planning consulting firm. They will want the land for shopping centers, residential developments and entertainment areas. As the economy revs up, more developers will be knocking on park owners’ doors. ![]()
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