Editor:
I have dealt with several realtors who were as shady as lawyers (Mailbox, July 7). Realtors rarely report other bad agents. When was the last time anyone ever heard of any lawyer or doctor reporting one of their fellows? That would be a big, fat never. They don’t do it because anyone who “tattles” would be ostracized.
Realtors can’t do a darn thing about “affordable” housing.
Who defines what “affordable” may mean? My price for affordable housing would vastly differ from any realtor. There are no reasonably, sanely priced houses. There will never be. It’s a ‘merican dream morphed into a nightmare.
Building more housing isn’t the answer. All freshly built housing does is put more structures onto the inflated market. Materials and labor these days destroy any sense of affordability. More housing does not mean lower prices. In the big picture, Humboldt County does not now and will never have the infrastructure of water and land to build enough housing, especially any that could be jokingly called affordable.
From the NCJ:”While mobile home parks have been recognized as important in terms of affordable housing, there’s been a national trend of investors buying mobile home parks and raising the rents beyond affordability for residents.”
See “Trailer Park Transcendence,” July 7, 2006.
The only affordable housing available are manufactured houses, usually located in what are ironically called “parks.” Those possibilities are disappearing as park owners are selling to greedy corporations. Rents skyrocket. Where are any realtors fighting that battle for affordability? Nowhere to be seen.
Since no supervisor has expressed a desire to help lower income folks, a citizens group collected petition signatures placing a rent control ordinance on the ballot this fall. (Learn more at www.humboldtmobilehome.org.)
This ordinance would only pertain to unincorporated county areas and only mobile home owners.
Gura Lashlee, McKinlevyille
This article appears in Humboldt Responds.
Humboldt has been my home for twenty years now. I finally got enough together for an awesome investment property/home which years later got caught up in the Countrywide BofA scandal and I lost everything including over 160k of my retirement. They all got bailed out but what did we get? Not a frikkin’ thing – just a bunch of stress and grief. Well now I am in a mobile home and it’s OK. I miss my land, but as stated the rents are constantly going up! The company who owns the MH park is of course far away from our area and they are eager to improve like thinking we want asphalt roads and pretty landscaping. I love being the rural person I am and despise all their ‘upgrades’ but forced against my will to pay for them if I want a roof over my head. Many folks in my MH park are struggling worse than I! If I wanted all this perfect manicured asphalt jungle I’d live amongst them in their sprawling metro cities! Humboldt is getting bought up so fast by big city corrupted corporations, and we are, one day very soon, are going to all wonder just what the hell happened! There won’t be anything left for our kids!