Folks from up north are streaming into the state to enjoy the mild summers, year-round sunshine and sugar-sand beaches. This is what happens, these tragedies."īut tell that to retirees on fixed incomes like John Borren, low-wage earners and farmworkers who cannot afford to live anyplace else in a booming real estate market like Florida's. "They should not be there because it is not stable housing in a state like Florida. "They're living in these mobile home parks because there is not an affordable housing stock available to them," says Jamie Ross, CEO of the Florida Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. About the same time, the industry started calling them manufactured housing. Department of Housing and Urban Development toughened wind standards for mobile homes. In 1994, two years after Hurricane Andrew pulverized the Homestead area, the U.S. They lost everything."īorren's story epitomizes Florida's affordable housing dilemma.
(I've put) thousands of dollars in it and they won't pay me nothin'. On a monthly social security check of $2,500 they got by on their little piece of paradise. The rent on their lot was only $580 a month.
Www.npr.org hourly news free#
They owned their 1972 trailer free and clear. Life went on.īorren would take his wife and motor out to the island in his skiff, where they collected shells and fossilized shark's teeth. I believe it now."īefore Ian, the hurricane of record on this stretch of coastline was Charley in 2004 - also a Category 4, with 150 mph winds. "They claim it was stronger than Charley. I never seen anything so strong," says Borren, a retired construction worker from Massachusetts. But they're sought-after because this is affordable housing in Florida. Older mobile homes, built to lower wind standards, are acutely vulnerable. It's a perennial problem during hurricane season. Most of the older mobile homes, built to lower wind standards, were pulverized by Hurricane Ian. NPR John Borren and his wife live in Gasparilla Mobile Estates in Placida, Fla.
0 kommentar(er)
