Illegal rentals, rising rents and significant lease violations are just a few of the factors jeopardizing the quality of life for seniors living in some of Riverhead’s 55-and-over mobile and manufactured home communities, according to a group of community members and elected officials who have organized a summit to address these issues this weekend.
The summit is the result of the concerns of residents of the Lakewood mobile home park on River Road, which, residents say, has transformed into a hotbed of illegal activity since it was sold to Utah-based Kingsley Management Corp in 2011.
“There’s a lot of fear in these parks,” said Town Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, who is funding the summit. “It’s pushing seniors out of their homes and onto the streets. We have a serious problem here.”
Local and corporate management of the communities in question have been unresponsive to complaints of criminal activity and code violations there. One Lakewood resident, George Bakke, says that after his elderly neighbor moved into a nursing home, her daughter and son-in-law – both under the age of 55 – moved into her mobile home a few months later.
“They drained urine onto the ground with a garden hose,” Bakke said at a town board hearing last August, where a group of Lakewood residents complained about deteriorating conditions in the community. “They threw bags of human feces on the ground. It was disgusting.”
Lakewood residents have reported drug sales, gunshots, a stabbing and even hypodermic needles littering the yards of squatters.
“We can’t expect anyone to live in conditions like this, let alone our seniors,” said Giglio.
She takes issue with more fundamental failures of the park’s management as well. “There are basic things that should be taken care of as a property owner who is renting space to occupants,” she said. “People are afraid a tree is going to fall down, and they get told by management that they needed to pay to take it down themselves. There was a light in a park that wasn’t working for years, and residents didn’t feel like they could walk safely down their own road.”
The park has even repeatedly violated the terms of its leases with its residents, Giglio said. After Kingsley bought the park in 2011, residents say that people clearly under the age of 55 began occupying homes there when the affordable housing community is only meant for seniors.
“These people are signing leases promising them a 55-and-over park,” Giglio said, “and all of a sudden there’s families living in the park, kids running around, school buses coming through every morning and afternoon. It isn’t right.”
Residents have brought their concerns to park management – including Kingsley’s corporate offices in Utah – but management has been unresponsive to complaints, they say. Park management says they are doing everything they can to enforce the rules and lease provisions, including taking violators to court.
Riverhead Town can bring code enforcement proceedings for town code violations, but does not have the authority to enforce the terms of the park’s leases with its residents, Giglio said. That’s up to the New York State Department of Homes and Community Renewal, which has been working closely with Bakke to do so.
“It’s a really hideous situation,” said Doug Rosenbrock, a former Lakewood resident who organized the summit along with Bakke. “The trashing of these communities, the introduction of drug dealers and prostitutes, is what we believe to be a deliberate effort to force retirees and seniors out of these parks.”
The summit will push for several points of legislation designed to protect residents of mobile home communities, Rosenbrock said. A rent stabilization effort would ensure that corporations like Kinglsey can’t purchase mobile home parks and then significantly increase the land lease rents as it has done with the Lakewood, Riverhaven and Riverwood communities in Riverhead, which “tremendously decreases your home value when you want to sell,” Rosenbrock said.
He also believes mobile home residents should have a right of first refusal, so that when park owners want to sell a park – as Lakewood, Riverhaven and Riverwood were all sold to Kingsley – the community’s residents would first have an opportunity to buy the park themselves and turn it into a resident-owned community.
“We also need a full disclosure statement about manufactured houses when people want to sign a lease,” he said. “There are risks associated with land leasing, and people need to be aware of them before they sign the dotted line. If I personally had fully understood the risks associated with land leasing when I made the decision to go down this road, I don’t think I would have ever gotten myself into this mess in the first place.”
The summit will feature several speakers, including the executive director of the National Manufactured Home Owners Association. It will be held at the Hotel Indigo from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday.
“We have a crisis situation here,” Rosenbrock said. “We need a really rapid response from the legistlatures. This has been happening all over the country for decades. What we’re trying to accomplish with this summit is preventing it from happening anywhere else.”
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