To the editor:

I was asked by Gus Colgain of the California Mobile Home Owners Resources and Action Association to respond to the article by Steve Prisament called "Residents come out en masse to protest proposed mobile home park." Possibly my experience with mobile homes can help public officials.

These conventional home owners are protesting because they feel that if a mobile home park is built close by, their property values will go down.

This common misconception stems from a lack of awareness as to what manufactured homes actually are today, along with the type and caliber of people who buy them.

Let me give you a true story that took place not too long ago and has to do with a new manufactured home that I put on private land in Lomita, Calif.

A young couple inherited some property when their grandmother died and an old rundown house built in 1924. They opted to replace it with a manufactured home.

The neighbors were quite vocal to this young couple, telling them, "Why do you want one of those tin-sided trailers, especially here in our nice neighborhood?" My advice to this couple was to just more forward, for in time the neighbors would see for themselves. And once the manufactured home was in, everyone was indeed surprised. Their reaction was, “It doesn't look like a trailer or mobile home at all.”

And it won't, because every manufactured home built today in California must meet HUD standards, the very same construction codes as any conventionally built house. The only difference is that the manufactured home, which is built in a factory under controlled conditions, costs less. The property values in the neighborhood actually increased a bit.

The article in The Current reported that some of these residents made comments about the caliber of the people involved – the typical “trailer trash” type rhetoric that is repeated by people who are seeing things from the wrong perspective.

The so-called trailer park was there long before they were, but only becomes an issue now because it will be seen. It's kind of like where I live in Huntington Beach, Calif. Once the developers and resorts got in, as so typical, then the concept changed: This area is too good for the likes of an old trailer park.

Yet we're still here, and the resorts have been in foreclosure twice now.

Yes, it was a fight to stay where we were, but we held out, and low and behold, property values increased anyway. And none of the manufactured homes in that community are even considered "green," as they will be when the Absecon manufactured home community comes about.

John Sisker

Huntington Beach, Calif.

Editor’s note: John Sisker is the founding director of Manufactured Home Owners Network.