Source: ABC Action News —
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Nancy DeCamp can no longer bear to enter the home on lot 257.
Her sister Tootie lived here, just a golf cart ride from where Nancy shares a place with her husband in their manufactured home community in central Pinellas County. After Tootie died in October, the DeCamps tried, without success, to sell her home.
“It’s still Tootie’s house,” Nancy DeCamp said, her eyes welling. “It’s very hard to be there.”
The DeCamps never expected this problem in Caribbean Isles, nestled between Largo and Seminole. Selling in the 55-and-older park, their real estate agent said, was once so easy she scarcely had time to stake “for sale” signs.
Then the park changed hands.
It sounds like a quintessential Florida tale: The land beneath a mobile home park sells, and the new owner hikes the rent beyond what residents can afford.
Caribbean Isles was supposed to be different. Years ago, as investors circled during the last real-estate boom, residents fought for their land and won: They bought it themselves to ward off the threat.
Last year, however, they sold the park — and their protection. The buyers offered sums that the owners felt they couldn’t turn down, ensuring financial security into their twilight. Some say they were convinced to sell by what they took as a guarantee that the park would stay affordable.
But rents for new residents have nearly doubled since last summer. Real estate agents say the sharp increases have made the homes residents still own nearly impossible to sell.
The park’s new management, Murex Properties, has told residents it disputes their account. Murex did not respond directly to several detailed questions posed by the Tampa Bay Times, but it provided a statement defending its rates as reasonable.
To residents, the conflict isn’t just about money. It’s about a loss of autonomy.
Once, Caribbean Isles was an affordable side door into a Florida retirement dream. Now, residents say, the maze of lots, encircled by a white fence, feels like a trap.
‘Residents’ revolution’
The cheers nearly drowned out the thunderstorm roiling outside the clubhouse.
It was the summer of 2005. More than 100 people had assembled to learn the fate of Stella Del Mar, their mobile home community. Many of them already struggled to survive, relying on Social Security to pay their $442 monthly lot rent.
With a developer offering to buy the park — and likely displace residents — they had pulled off a massive victory: They’d pooled enough money to buy it themselves.
Those who opted in would own the land by buying shares in the newly created co-op. “Residents’ revolution,” proclaimed the headline in the St. Petersburg Times.
“The owners were residents,” said Norman Pickett, 83, who lived there at the time and eventually became a shareholder. “They lived among us.”
Neighbors renamed the park Caribbean Isles.
Communal ownership quelled fears that a developer could buy the land and kick residents off, or that a new landlord would jack up rents.
Homeowners with shares in the park paid a small monthly fee for maintenance and management. When it came to major decisions about the park, they each had a vote. Everyone else who owned homes paid rent on the land.
This model of resident ownership is the “gold-standard” for keeping a mobile home community affordable, said Esther Sullivan, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver who studies manufactured homes.
Usually, residents of manufactured home communities own their houses but pay rent to the landowners.
Corporate owners “raise rents, tack on fees and increase the expenses for residents living there,” Sullivan said. “(Residents’) vested interest is in keeping rents low and fees minimal.”
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