Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503060084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The legislative victory by the Virginia Manufactured Housing Association followed passage in 1990 of a law ordering localities to allow double-wide mobile homes in agricultural zones, and a 1991 law that amended the legislation to include all agricultural-type zones - no matter what localities call them.
``If someone owns some land, why restrict them from living on that land just because of the price of the home they can afford?'' said Ron Dunlap, executive director of the association.
The average price of a single-wide is $18,000 to $22,000, Dunlap said. Double-wides average $32,000 to $35,000.
Arguments for and against trailer home restrictions can be politically prickly. No one wants to be seen as opposed to ``affordable housing.'' Everyone is in favor of maintaining ``property values.''
Del. Harvey Morgan, R-Gloucester, was one of the few delegates to vote against the single-wide bill. To Morgan, the issue was state interference in local government, ``no matter how much your heart goes out to people who need housing.''
Del. Shirley Cooper, D-Yorktown, sponsored the legislation. Mobile homes are ``just as fine and just as good as any other,'' Cooper said.
She has two sons, 19 and 23, who live at home. ``My sons cannot live in York County unless we provide some kind of housing for them,'' she said.
Deputies and firefighters have to look outside the county for homes within their budgets. ``Affordable housing is absolutely necessary,'' Cooper said.
Opponents argue the homes don't bring in as much tax revenue as site-built houses, and that they depreciate over the years rather than appreciate.
``The whole question comes back to supposedly taxation,'' said Gene Gillespie, secretary of the manufactured housing association and owner of Atlantic Mobile Homes in Saluda. ``But that's like saying if you drive a Chevrolet you cannot live in the county. You must drive a Lincoln.''
Jeff Haughney, Gloucester County planning director, repeats an argument frequently used by localities opposed to manufactured housing: It costs a county just as much to educate a child from a mobile home as from a site-built home, yet the parents of the former probably pay less in taxes.
``So, in essence,'' Haughney said, ``the owners of site-built housing are subsidizing the owners of manufactured housing. Should those site-built owners be discriminated against?''
To that argument, Gillespie responds: It costs a county just as much to educate a child from an $80,000 site-built home as a $300,000 site-built home.
``No housing pays its fair share of taxes,'' Dunlap said.
by CNB