Skirting

Last year we started to require existing mobile homes, owned by others, to upgrade their appearance. This, of course, also meant the people who owned these homes having to deal with maintenance items rather than letting them fall apart!

Our first requirement was to get rid of rusty roofs. The two tenants who did not/would not comply were evicted. Our next step was to require complete proper skirting of all homes. We allowed six months for everyone to comply, recognizing that most could not afford to do this item in a one or two month period of time. All homes were to be skirted by the end of the year.

True to form, no one even started the project before December. (We learned long ago that they will all either be right at the deadline or slightly over it.) Our park is now almost fully skirted! Homes that have never had skirting now have it, and homes with missing skirting are completely done. One of the women in the park who was missing skirting on only one end was surprised that her bedroom floor was now warmer! She was also extremely happy with how good her home now looks - they chose to remove what was there and apply all new skirting.

We have had a little resistance to this requirement. Jim approached one of our tenants, who works for the State of Alabama, reminding her of the deadline, and she told him she did not feel it was worth the money she would have to spend! She is now getting ready to skirt.... Our other person who did not immediately fall in the groove works at Troy University and her home is visible as people enter the park. She intended to do it, but waited until the bitter end.

Our projected upgrade project this year is having people replace steps. Some of the tenants seem to think that anything is good enough. I went to one house one day and realized the steps they use all the time were not quite what they should be - one step was 2 inches, the next 12, then maybe 4 for the next. Others just need a board replaced here and there. This project will require Jim to work directly with tenants who will have to fix their steps, rather than just a letter to begin with. They obviously don't have any idea their steps have problems!

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