Document text
City eyes mobile park rules By BILL VARBLE Planners meet What: Medford Planning Commission discusses requirements for manufactured-home parks in city limits When: 7 tonight Where: Council chambers, Medford City Hall, 411. W. Eighth St. Should Medford's manufactured-home parks be required to have sidewalks, recreation areas and RV storage areas? A proposal to impose such requirements is drawing fire from the Southern Oregon chapter of the Oregon Manufactured Home Association, a trade group. The Medford Planning Commission will consider those requirements and others in a meeting tonight. "There are a number of design elements that the Planning Commission has come to expect in manufactured parks that are not currently in the Land Development Code," a staff report says. The report says the amendment would add features the Planning Commission "feels are necessary components for a liveable and functional park environment." The report cited recreation areas, sidewalks, landscape setbacks, storage for recreational vehicles, garbage bins, bicycle parking spaces and a landscape plan for common areas. What's wrong with that? Reliable Homes' Jim Black, a spokesman for the Oregon Manufactured Home Association, a group which claims as members 27 mobile home dealers from Coos Bay to Klamath Falls, said Wednesday the amendment goes too far. "The ordinance discriminates in that manufactured homes would have to have a five-foot sidewalk, where with site-built homes it isn't required that they have any," Davis said. "It would require manufactured homes to exceed requirements for conventional homes." Proposed requirements include 32-foot-wide streets, standard curbs, a five-foot sidewalk on one side of each street and 2,500 square feet of outdoor recreation area or 250 square feet per dwelling, whichever is more. Davis said such requirements will drive up the cost of manufactured homes and cut prospective buyers out of the market. "We want to make sure there's affordable housing," he said. "We're trying to keep it affordable for the people. The (manufactured home) factories buy lumber at a trainload cost. That's why the homes cost less. "The more we mandate what a person has to have the more we restrict who can afford it." Interim Planning Director Mark Gallagher said most of the recommendations have been required of park developers the last few years anyway. "We decided it would be best if they were in the code so they can see them ahead of time," he said. He said it's likely the commission will do more work before passing the recommendations on to the City Council in February or March. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA