Anchorage Daily News

KENAI -- Highland Pride Mobile Home Park has some tidy yards, and some worn bare by chained-up dogs.

There's an old clothes dryer on one front stoop, a three-wheeler with no wheels near another. In one driveway there's a weight bench and barbell on the packed snow, ready for a subzero workout.

It ain't pretty, residents acknowledge, but it's home. Thanks to a new city ordinance, though, some fear Kenai is trying to deprive them of having even that much.

"All-America city?" Highland Pride resident Lori Leretz sniffed, referring to the National Civic League distinction proudly displayed on Kenai's welcome signs. "When did I stop being an American?"

City officials and the park's neighbors, who pressed for the new mobile home standards, say they want safer, more attractive neighborhoods.

The ordinance unanimously approved by the City Council last week is simple and, all things being equal, similar to what the city requires for other homes: electrical and sewage standards, a $100 building inspection, a 10-foot setback on lots, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

But residents say all things aren't equal -- many who move trailers here spend their last dollar just having the homes hauled in -- and the effect will be that their own, grandfathered homes can't be moved within the city. The ordinance prohibits setting up a trailer without a National Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards seal, which did not exist when many of the homes were built. It also allows the city staff to determine what is "dilapidated" and therefore banned.

And it adds to an existing ordinance prohibiting mobile homes on individual private lots, leaving some with older trailers nowhere to go if the park owner sells out.

The uproar started with a letter on Sept. 25. Kurt Rogers, an Anchorage retiree who moved into a neighborhood just uphill from Highland Pride, wrote to Mayor Pat Porter complaining about safety hazards and eyesores in the park. Rogers and several others must drive through the park from the Kenai Spur Highway to reach their homes in the spruce and birch forest on the city's eastern edge.

"The court is in the middle of a good area, with good homes all around," Rogers wrote. "The court is lowering the value of our homes."

The court also has been there since 1968, which Rogers concedes but says isn't the point. He lived in a trailer himself when he was in Seldovia during the 1960s, he said Friday. He took good care of it, he said, which is why he had no trouble selling it. At Highland Pride, he said, whenever one moves out, a junkier one seems to move in.

"There's some good people in there that keep their trailers up and keep their animals in fences, but most of them don't," Rogers said.

"I don't want to be the bad guy, but somebody's got to do something."

Porter said the ordinance was overdue, and not because the city has anything against mobile homes. In fact, she said, the main reason for it is to ensure the safety of those who live in the homes -- whether from fires or unsafe building methods sometimes used in plywood additions.

To residents, though, the ordinance boxes them in, if not immediately out of the city. Jim Patten, a retiree who has lived at Highland Pride for 15 years, has two small 1960s-era trailers placed side-to-side and essentially glued together with foam insulation.

"This would not meet any of the codes," he said while sitting in his living room, family photos and keepsakes covering most of the walls. His grown son sometimes lives with him because of a disability, he said, and their housing options are limited.

If the lot rent goes up, Patten said, he's out of luck. Under the new ordinance he couldn't move the trailers to one of the few other parks in town. Under the existing ordinance, he couldn't put it on a private lot even if he could afford one.

"It's a classic example of the haves versus the have-nots," Patten said. "They say, 'We don't like you because you don't have jobs and you live in mobile homes, so we're going to remove all mobile homes from the city of Kenai.' "

Leretz is quick to point out that her husband has a job. Like Patten, who used to report license plates to police whenever people frequented a trailer formerly suspected as a drug outlet, she acknowledged that life in a trailer park is not ideal. Some residents are responsible, and others aren't. Eventually, she said, her family would like to move the home to a more private location, and now that means leaving the city.

"This trailer court was here before their houses were here. It's real sad that they've got to knock down the poor people and the real low-middle class because it's an eyesore," she said.

"Kenai wants to get rid of all mobile home parks, and they're making it very easy to do it," she said.

City Councilman Joe Moore said that's not the intent.

"I don't think it's fair to say that low-cost housing is not a priority to the city of Kenai," Moore said. "But I would certainly say that safe housing is. It's only responsible for the city to make sure housing is safe."

The newly required setback is important not just to residents, Moore said, but also to firefighters who must maneuver between homes in emergencies.

"I really don't have an opinion about whether trailers belong in the city, but I do think that any building in the city ... needs to be safe," he said.

Rogers said the new ordinance is only a start. Cleanliness and nuisance dogs will remain an issue. His first thought was to buy the park, he said, but the owner wanted too much. Instead, he'll ask the city for more action.

Daily News reporter Brandon Loomis can be reached in the newspaper's Soldotna bureau at bloomis@adn.com or 1-907-260-5215, ext. 24.