Her yard overflows withsunflowers and creeping vines, so green it looks neon. Her plot looks down on the 1960s-era section of Seminole Springs Mobile Home Park, a tidy subdivision tucked high in the Santa Monica Mountains.“All this was torched — there was nothing left,” Maus, 75, said as she surveyed the Janus-faced landscape from her burned-out lot. “Every day I come up here, it tears me up. We get a glimpse of hope, but then it’s gone.
“We’re still in the same place we were a year ago — there’s nothing done,” said Ester Marantz Bruce, a burned-out victim and a member of the park’s embattled board of directors. “Insurance gave me money for a year of rent, but that money is over. We now need to rent homes for another year, and we all don’t know how we will pay.
More than 100 mobile home parks were affected by California wildfires last year alone, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees 81% of the state’s roughly 4,800 mobile home and “special occupancy” parks. Many of those that burned the year before remain empty even as neighboring tracts have rebuilt.
But beneath the community’s structural crisis lies an existential one: Unlike the vast majority of mobile home parks in the country, Seminole Springs is owned and run by its residents, who have worked together for decades to keep it affordable. Of the half-dozen residents interviewed for this article, all were adamant they would not have moved to Seminole Springs if it were not mutually owned.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: CNBC - 🏆 12. / 72 Read more »
Source: Newsweek - 🏆 468. / 52 Read more »
Source: Refinery29 - 🏆 26. / 68 Read more »
Source: CafeMom - 🏆 701. / 51 Read more »
Source: runnersworld - 🏆 19. / 71 Read more »
Source: BuzzFeed - 🏆 730. / 51 Read more »