E-M:/ Maunfactured Housing

Here's another environmental issue working its way through the House. Changing the way Mobile Home Parks do business in Michigan. I don't know where this falls with respect to timber mandates and "slob" farming, but it certainly is an industry that is making some very big impacts on rural townships and the environment. Mondays edition of the Detroit News had a front page article highlighting again the disparities between the taxes mobile home park residents pay Vs. property owners. Rep. Judith Scranton and Rep. Valde Garcia are heading up ANOTHER task force (the Engler administration created a task force to look into this in 1997) to try change the state law. These behemoth developments definitely give birth to sprawl by the simple fact that they require greater amounts of services yet don't pay for them, thereby almost requiring townships to invite industry and commercial businesses into areas just to help cover the expense of these parks And if that isn't enough, many parks have on site sewer/water treatment plants that have a high failure rate, which in turn tend to spill into water ways and pollute. And let's not forget the amount of impervious surfaces rolled out to support these very unsustainable "houses". Anyway, these bills always get buried because there are not enough people around the state feeling the impacts of this industry. Yet townships need to have a way to put limits on how many housing units one park can hold and try to place them in places with existing sewer. But many developers, when they don't get a rezoning permit approved take rural townships to court, and again property tax payers pay, and usually lose.