All the signs of home accent the tidy Essex neighborhood of Williams Estates: hanging flower baskets, gilders, smiling garden gnomes. Pauline and Leon Emmerit like to sit on their front porch, watching ducks waddle by from the nearby stream.
“I love it. I just love it,” Pauline Emmerit said. “We moved here from the city, and we?ll never go back.”
But according to county law, their manufactured home doesn?t really count as a home. Mobile home parks like Williams Estates and the adjacent Peppermint Woods are restricted to land zoned for manufacturing use, explaining why they have an airport and an abandoned factory for neighbors.
The rule assumes today?s trailer parks are the same as yesteryear?s, said Council Member Joseph Bartenfelder, D-District 5, with concentrations of low-income residents, rusty cars and plastic pink flamingoes.
But that?s no longer the case, he said.
” ?Trailer parks? is a misnomer,” Bartenfelder said. “Mobile home parks today are really nice neighborhoods and those people work hard at maintaining those neighborhoods.”
Almost 1,700 Baltimore County residents live in mobile home parks in Essex and Middle River alone, according to Linda Hart, president of the county?s mobile homeowners? association. And with 27 parks throughout the county, she said an increasing number is finding mobile homes an answer to the county?s shortage of ranch-style houses.
She estimated two-thirds of the county?s mobile-home residents are seniors, who are attracted to single-story living with smaller yards and no property taxes. The income and education levels of the county?s parks also are increasing, she said.
“Some of these homes go for $125,000 and better,” she said. “People today live in mobile homes because they want to, not because they have to.”
With that in mind, county staff is considering a separate zoning category for mobile home parks, aiming to give their residents greater access to the amenities of typical residential areas, like restaurants, malls and libraries.
Bartenfelder is also asking county officials to repeal a monthly tax mobile home residents pay based on their land rent, a tax Hart said provides no return service. She said the association has been fighting the fee since 1992, which exacerbates steadily rising land rent ? recently around $400 a month in Williams Estates ? as assessments rise.
“We don?t know what we?re getting in return,” she said. “If they can?t remove it, they need to explain why only mobile-home owners have to pay it.”
The bill repealing the tax will be discussed at the county?s May 9 work session.
