BREWSTER
Henry and June Offermann rent land in their trailer park. A law seeks to protect people like them from a sudden sale.
NAVIGATING the rocky shoals of retirement housing can be unappealing when the available options have names like active adult, continuing care and assisted living.
But here at a place called Someday, on a breezy ridge overlooking this tiny Putnam County village, about 35 couples ages 55 and older have discovered a more unusual and distinctly more affordable retirement option.
June and Henry Offermann are two residents of this age-restricted trailer park, with each of its homes set on a tiny lot with a miniature front yard. This time of year, the first sprouts of spring are pushing through the ground in many of the gardens, lending an air of individuality to the otherwise boxlike residences.
Many people at Someday (formerly known as Mac’s Trailer Park) hope to spend the rest of their lives relishing the peace and quiet that the setting affords. They say they enjoy being part of a like-minded group whose members often get together on one another’s porches for barbecues and socializing, but who can also repair to the privacy of their own living rooms.
What is more, they say, the price is right. Two-bedroom manufactured homes at Someday cost less than $80,000, and the monthly rent on each 3,000-square-foot parcel is about $400.
“For this kind of money,” said William Blaney, 73, “it’s hard to find so much space and privacy anyplace else.”
But these days, retiring to a trailer park anywhere in the New York City region carries the risk of impermanence, especially as land costs rise and developers compete for sites they can plow under and redevelop for luxury housing. In Syosset last April, a developer bought four acres in Nassau County’s last mobile home park, and residents got eviction notices. They are fighting back in court and have turned down the landowner’s cash offer to move out.
For now at least, retirement life at Someday remains idyllic. John G. Gress, the park owner, said he had no intention of selling out to a developer.
But in theory if not in practice, mobile homeowners are at the mercy of park owners, said Jonathan Harkavy, chief of staff for State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, a Democrat from Brooklyn, who, along with other legislators, is drafting protective legislation.
The intent is to give mobile-homeowners the right of first refusal, so they could buy the land as a group and run it as a cooperative. Tenants of trailer parks would also gain the right to challenge rent increases in court.
If passed, the new laws would affect 2,150 parks of manufactured homes in New York State, said George Miles, president of the Park Resident Homeowners Association, an advocacy group in Ontario, N.Y.
Mr. Miles said his group did not keep separate numbers for age-restricted trailer parks like Someday, although he said, “We know for a fact that there are quite a few.”
For now, Mr. Gress’s stated intentions to hold onto the Someday land is good news for residents like Mr. and Mrs. Offermann (he is 85 and a former delicatessen owner; she is 79 and a retired secretary), who moved here after living in a two-bedroom condominium in Southeast. “That was a noisy place with lots of young people and kids and not right at this point in our lives,” Mr. Offermann said. The couple bought their two-bedroom mobile home in 1991 for $73,000.
Mr. Blaney, a former plant manager at an aluminum foundry, and his wife, Marie, 66, a retired county bus driver, bought their two-bedroom mobile home for $75,000 eight years ago.
The price of the manufactured homes is not market-driven in the way that home prices are, although the rent for the land — which includes taxes but not utilities, water, sewer or refuse — does increase about every four years, Mr. Gress said.
“I base the rent on what my costs and taxes are for the 5.1 acres,” he said, adding that he had not received offers from developers for his land and was able to realize a profit on the park without sharp rent increases.
“My idea is to keep Someday as an affordable housing option for seniors,” he said, noting that the occupancy rate at the park is 100 percent, and that there is a waiting list for units.
Over all, Mr. Miles said, manufactured homes represent the fastest-growing segment of the real estate market. But when it comes to home loans, manufactured houses are considered chattel, like cars and boats, rather than real estate.
T. Samuel Hoye, vice president of the First Credit Corporation in Gloversville, says that for manufactured homes, his company offers loans for up to 20 years, but not mortgages. Interest rates vary, from 7.25 percent, for a new home, to as high as 10 percent for an older one. As with car loans, there are no closing costs.
As the market for manufactured homes grows and as the houses themselves become larger and more elaborate — some with vaulted ceilings, sunken bathtubs and gas fireplaces — the term “trailer park” is increasingly out of favor.
“That designation should have gone out with ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ” said Richard Ketover, owner of a Rockland County property named (surprisingly) Quaker Road Trailer Park.
Nor does “mobile home” work very well, he added — what with the increasing size of manufactured homes, which these days are often on concrete foundations. (Technically, the houses could be picked up and moved, but the procedure would be difficult and expensive.)
But little of this is of concern to Ernie Smith, 90, a former paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army during World War II who has lived at Someday for the past two decades.
Happy with the decision to retire to the trailer park, he and his wife, Mae, tend the African violets in their kitchen window and await the arrival of warm weather, when they can putter outdoors in their garden.
“For our retirement,” he said, “we couldn’t have made a better choice than to move here, and I’m not going to worry about all the other issues.”