In California, the recent floods have wreaked havoc throughout the state, causing issues for businesses and homeowners alike.
Manufactured home communities throughout the state were affected as well.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, residents of the Golden Wheel Mobile Home Park were hit hard. Resident Lam Tran, a part-time teacher who is caring for her disabled husband, was in a particularly bad spot and wasn’t sure how she was going to get their home fixed, as muddy flood waters ruined the stairs and the front yard.
“It was so scary,” said Tran. “I just worried. I was worried for the flood, and the worry didn’t go away.”
Other residents had similar stories, and were not sure what was next.
Until last week.
Golden Wheel Mobile Home Park was among the first communities to benefit from charitable efforts of the Silicon Valley chapter of Rebuilding Together and Bank of America, designed to help the poorest city residents who were flooded out with the costly repair work needed to restore their homes.
“We’re helping people who don’t have the ability to do the work themselves, or can’t afford to pay someone to do it for them,” said Beverley Jackson of Rebuilding Together.
“We’ve got 40 homes lined up in this park [sic] that we’re going to fix. Mobile homes [sic] are the last affordable housing there is in Silicon Valley.”
Thirty-nine buildings throughout the city of San Jose remain so damaged from floods, that they were unfit for habitation. That number is down from more than 1,300 in February.
“Property owners have to take certain actions like have a damage survey done, and the city is here to help get the property moved out of yellow-tag status,” said San Jose spokeswoman Cheryl Wessling.
“But we need the property owners to work with us.”
Jackson says that those receiving help from her organization are all low-income homeowners who didn’t have flood insurance.
Golden Wheel community manager Erin McGuire says that about 150 of the 221 units in the community suffered some sort of damage.
“A lot of people were able to just let it dry out underneath, many people did what repairs they needed themselves,” said McGuire.
“But some were pretty bad.”
In an interesting twist, Wessling says that many owners of flood-damaged property do not live in the area, and have not responded to attempts to contact them.
Surprising, given the Silicon Valley real estate market.
“You would think they would want them anything but sitting vacant in disrepair,” said Wessling.
For more on the California floods, and their impact on manufactured home communities in the state, click here. ##
(Image credits are as shown above.)
Submitted by RC Williams to the Daily Business News for MHProNews
