Outgoing Spokane City Councilman Mike Allen thinks the city violated its Comprehensive Plan when council members recently changed language in the plan in a way that he believes limits the ability of manufactured and mobile home parks to sell their properties.

A portion of the text of chapter three, pertaining to land use, of the city’s comp plan was amended to read as follows: “Designate appropriate areas for the preservation of mobile and manufactured mobile home parks.”

Language drafted in support of the single-sentence change to the comp plan says, “Manufactured and/or mobile home parks provide affordable housing to many city residents. In many cases, they provide the opportunity of home ownership to households that cannot afford to purchase other types of housing.

“When existing manufactured home parks are redeveloped, many homeowners are unable to move their homes to other sites. Additionally, redeveloped and manufactured home parks are generally not replaced by new parks within the city, resulting in a net loss of this type of housing.”

The City Council added the mobile home park preservation language to the comp plan by a 5-2 vote at its Nov. 2 meeting. Allen and Councilman Mike Fagan voted against it.

The Spokane Plan Commission had voted 5-1 in October against adding that sentence to the comp plan. That board is charged with providing advice and making recommendations on broad planning goals, policies, and other matters as requested by the council. Recommending amendments to the city’s comp plan and developing regulations on the implementation of the plan are among the Plan Commission’s duties. 

“Ultimately, to me, it’s an infringement upon individual property rights,” Allen said in an interview days after the vote was taken. “The overwhelming majority of our own plan commission voted against this proposal. I don’t know why we passed it.”

Allen is a two-term councilman who opted not to run for re-election. His current term is over at the end of this year.

Councilman Jon Snyder says Allen’s concerns are unfounded.

“Do you know what this is?” Snyder asks rhetorically. “This is a language change that just offers a new way to describe mobile homes. This does not impact a landowner’s ability to sell their property.”

At the Nov. 2 meeting, Snyder said he didn’t need a formal study from the Plan Commission to know that affordable housing is becoming more challenging for people in Spokane to find.

 “We are in an affordable housing crisis, I think, in the city of Spokane, particularly folks who can’t afford standard housing. And it’s not getting any easier,” he said.

Snyder said mobile and manufactured homes weren’t even mentioned in the city’s Comprehensive Plan prior to the council vote.

“What we have is a square peg in a round hole,” Snyder said at the meeting. “We have no way to adequately describe mobile home parks in our zoning code right now. That was one of the prime reasons for bringing this forward. We can’t plan unless we have the designation.”

Snyder provided to the Journal a report compiled by a staff member of his office that cites data gathered from seven different agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Housing, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Data presented in the paper is localized where possible to give policy makers a clearer picture of what is happening in this city,” the report says.

One of the key findings of the report, titled, “Is there Affordable Housing in Spokane,” says that the supply of affordable housing in the city of Spokane is inadequate to meet current and future needs. It also found that racial minorities face greater obstacles in accessing affordable housing, as do single women and single mothers, and that those residents are more likely to live in poverty.

“Spokane is not doing enough to increase access to affordable housing,” the report says. “The city only has one policy in its municipal code related to affordable housing incentives.”

Plan Commission member Rick Dullanty said the commission recommended the council not approve the preservation language because a formal housing study hadn’t been completed. “We felt that we had no evidence or information before us to make a decision to promote this,” Dullanty told the council.

In Tumwater, Wash., in 2009, city officials created manufactured home districts for six of that city’s 10 mobile home parks, in part to help protect residents on fixed incomes who would have been unable to afford more traditional types of housing in the event they had to move.

Mobile home park owners in Tumwater challenged the city’s ordinance in court. The U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington ruled in favor of the city. Then, in 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that ruling, court records say.

The Spokane County Assessor’s office says there are 19 manufactured home “communities” in the city of Spokane. The average age of the communities is 39 years and the average number of spaces per community is 66. The 19 mobile home parks range in age from 12 years to 59 years, assessor’s records say.

A tenant lives in a manufactured or mobile home park for seven or eight years on average, data show. There are 232 manufactured homes where the homeowners own the parcels. The average age of the home is nearly 25 years, while average assessed value is $50,800, with the median assessed value at $55,300, assessor’s records say.

Stanley Schwartz, an attorney at the law firm of Witherspoon Kelley, represents the owners of the Cascade Manufactured Home Community at 2311 W. 16th, in southwest Spokane. His clients oppose the preservation language.

“There is no specifically identified problem. It’s all anecdotal,” Schwartz said to the council. “The cart is being put before the horse, and that is a quote directly from your plan commission. We have anecdotal evidence from other places but not Spokane.”

City Council President Ben Stuckart voted in favor of preserving manufactured and mobile home parks in the city limits.

“Does anything change after today? I don’t believe it does, and that’s why I’m supporting it,” said Stuckart, who won re-election the following evening. “We’re not taking away private property rights with this decision.”