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Residents benefit from county's first-ever mobile home expo
By SUZETTE PORTER
Article published on Wednesday, May 17, 2006 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/051706_pco-01-a.jpg) |
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| Photo by TERRE PORTER |
| Alice Funk, assistant director of marketing programs for the Florida Manufactured Housing Association, left, and Bill Turney, FMHA assistant executive director, wait for the next group of visitors to come by at the May 11 Mobile Home Expo at the Largo Cultural Center. |
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![[Image]](/content_images/051706_pco-01-b.jpg) |
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| Photo by TERRE PORTER |
| The Mobile Home Expo banner welcomes county residents to come in and visit the many displays of resources made available at the first-ever event on May 11 at the Largo Cultural Center. |
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LARGO – At least 700 people attended the county’s Mobile Home Expo on May 11 at the Largo Cultural Center.
Anthony Jones, community development director and executive director of the Housing Finance Authority, deemed the first-ever event as a “rousing success” and said residents had waited in line for the doors to open Thursday morning.
According to Jones and Fran Pheeny, HFA senior community planning specialist, feedback from residents and vendors had been positive with all requesting future expos.
Pheeny said most people thanked them for hosting the event. She told a story about one woman who had come in upset because her mobile home park had gone downhill and had become drug infested.
“She didn’t know where to turn,” Pheeny said. “I hooked her up with people from real estate and the lenders here at the expo. She was practically in tears, she was so grateful for the help.”
Pheeny said people also were grateful for the extended hours. The expo stayed open until 7 p.m. to allow working people and people with children to attend. Although the early morning crowd far exceeded the late afternoon crowd, vendors and county staff giving out information stayed busy all day.
Jones said the expo was the result of a request by the Board of County Commissioners in response to calls from mobile home residents on a variety of concerns.
Karen Bolin, outreach coordinator for the state Department of Financial Services, called the expo a “wonderful event.” She said she had talked to a number of people about financing resources available to them.
Bolin also handed out information about home, health, auto and life insurance, as well as information about the new Medicare Prescription Program.
“We wanted to have available as much information as we could in areas we felt would be of concern,” she said.
Barbara Brooks, loan officer with Clearwater Neighborhood Housing Services, said the expo provided a good opportunity to educate people about the different programs available to purchase a home. She said many people don’t realize that her organization’s services are available countywide and not just in Clearwater.
Alice Funk, assistant director of marketing programs for the Florida Manufactured Housing Association, said residents had talked about several issues, including insurance and the number of mobile home parks being sold in the county. She said they also wanted information about the differences between older mobile homes and today’s modern manufactured homes.
Bill Turney, FMHA assistant executive director, said Florida has long been a state with where people lived in mobile homes.
“Florida got started after the war when people started coming back,” he said. “People wanted to go places and travel. Many wanted to move to areas that weren’t so cold. They moved to Florida and started buying those little trailers.”
Some of those trailers from the 1950s still exist in Pinellas County, Turney said.
Today’s mobile homes are better built and more attractive, Funk said. They are less like a travel trailer than the mobile homes of the past, she said.
Turney said today’s manufactured homes are not considered to be mobile homes and could not be distinguished from site-built homes, if they were installed properly and finished right.
Funk said one of the biggest differences is that manufactured homes built since 1994 are able to withstand hurricanes.
“None of the manufactured homes in the state built to the 1994 standards sustained any major damage from the recent hurricanes,” she said.
County staff members were out in force with displays from the County Connection Center, Family and Consumer Services, Department of Justice and Consumer Services and the Housing Finance Authority and the Supervisor of Election’s office, where people could register to vote.
A similar event, H.O.P.E. Expo 2006 is planned for Saturday, June 10, 8:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the Harborview Center, 300 Cleveland St., Clearwater. The “Homeownership for People Everywhere” expo will provide information, exhibits and a homebuyer workshop.
Call 461-0618 or visit www.hopeexpo.org.
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Article published on Wednesday, May 17, 2006
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