Threatened By Rising Housing Prices, Some SeaTac Homeowners Fight Back

Next-door neighbors and Duvall Riverside Village homeowners Stephanie Rosevear (L) and Danelle Knapp (R) return home from a walk.
Next-door neighbors and Duvall Riverside Village homeowners Stephanie Rosevear (L) and Danelle Knapp (R) return home from a walk. Photo credit: Anna Boiko-Weyrauch / Marketplace

SeaTac housing isn’t cheap. The median rent in the city surrounding the Seattle-Tacoma airport is more than $2,000 a month, according to one real estate website. That’s in King County, where median home prices are around $625,000.

This makes mobile homes some of the few affordable housing options in the area, Marketplace reports.

The land those mobile homes are on could be worth a lot more to the owners if it was developed into apartment complexes or hotels, leaving families — about 9,000 households — at risk of homelessness. But some mobile home owners have found an option that could let them stay.

They’re banding together to buy the land their homes are on.

Residents of Duvall Riverside Village, a mobile home park in SeaTac, formed a non-profit organization to collectively buy their land. They now pay dues to the non-profit, and run the park along with a board of directors, allowing homeowners to make their own financial decisions about park management.

Read the full story from Marketplace.

Related Stories:

A bright yellow and black sign is placed in a front yard. Some of the text, in red letters, reads: "Save our homes and tree canopy."

Next phase of housing, zoning changes being considered in Tacoma

In season four, episode 19 of the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” actor Bradley Whitford plays a city council member in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Whitford tells Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, “City council isn’t about making everyone happy. In fact, every decision you make is going to make a lot of people very unhappy.”
Right now, the Tacoma City Council is considering a set of planning commission recommendations under the second phase of Home in Tacoma, the housing action strategy the city has been implementing over the last few years.

Read More »