We had a wonderful audience of 42 attendees. The meeting started promptly at 3:00 and presentations were completed before 4:00. Many questions were asked over the following half hour and everyone seemed appreciative and better informed about our community. Cookies and coffee were served.
Welcome homeowners, thank you for joining with us today to support our wonderful community in Sharman Mobile Home Park. I am Brian Snyder, Lynn and I purchased our home at site 113 in 2017. I will be the moderator for our meeting. Our presentation will take about 45 minutes. We will have lots of time after the presentation to ask questions, provide comments and discuss the information presented.
We have a guest here from Crest II Park, Mr. Frank Cooper. Welcome Frank. Crest II is looking at establishing their own Park Association.
I am not aware of any previous all resident meetings (other than for Block watch) so this information meeting is a milestone in the growth of our community. While Sharman Mobile Home Park is a small community in Nanaimo, we are part of the large, affordable Manufactured Home Park housing sector in BC, consisting of:
You hear news about governments spending large sums of $$ (your tax money) to develop affordable housing. MHPs offer the most affordable and most quickly built housing in BC. However since MHPs represent only 3% of all rental units in BC, we struggle to get the attention of the Government. Overall in the past 8 years over 100 parks have closed or been redeveloped affecting almost 4000 homeowners who lost their homes.
So who speaks for this large housing sector, who works with the government to improve the lives of homeowners like ourselves in MHPs? I would like to introduce Chris Mather, (site 133), the Secretary/Treasurer of the Active Manufactured Home Owners Association of BC to answer this question. Chris.
The counterpart to the Active Manufactured Homeowners Association (BCMHO.ca) is the Manufactured Home Park Owner's Alliance of BC. (MHPOABC) This is an organization of about 400 park owners in BC who actively lobby the government to increase the rent you pay. Our Park Manager is a Vice President of the Alliance.
The Alliance charges an annual membership fee of $350, hence has a large budget to support their cause. Large corporations that own multiple parks in BC support this group. For instance the owners of Crest 1 and 2, - Parkbridge Communities. You can find out more about the Park Owners Alliance on their web site.
The Active Manufactured Homeowners Association (BCMHO.ca) plays an important role to support MHP homeowners at the provincial level. So how do we, as homeowners in Sharman Park, have our voice heard at the provincial level? It is important for our local community to come together and work alongside the provincial group and directly support homeowners in our community.
I would like to introduce the President of the Sharman Park Homeowners Association Lionel Space, (site 113) to provide information on your Homeowner Association.
One of the important support groups in our park is the Sharman Park Block Watch. Barbara Allisen (site 70) has, for many years, organized this important support for our community. Barbara.
Social events and activities bring neighbours together and help make our community a fun and happy place to enjoy during our later years. Lynn Crowther (site 113) chairs our Social Committee and has lots of exciting ideas to share with you. Lynn.
Sharman Blockwatch
(sharmanblockwatch@gmail.com)
and report incidents as well.
Report Non-emergency incidents to:
RCMP: 250-754-2345
Here is some history and interesting facts about our community.
Let's look at our Home assessments. In the past 5 years they have doubled.
Why is your home's assessed value important.
Freehold homeowners can obtain a reverse mortgage or 2nd mortgage to access their home equity. Owners of manufactured homes in a MHP cannot.
As a Manufactured Home Park is private land there is specific legislation (the Laws) that governs our lives and our homes in our community. I would like to introduce Fred Kidner (Site 100) to review some of these. Fred.
A big thank you to all our presenters. We have covered a lot of information today, some of which may be new to you. Please feel free to ask any questions of our presenters or comment on the information presented. We encourage active discussion on any topic of interest to you.
Thank you for supporting your community in Sharman Mobile Home Park.
Thank you to all who came and to those who invested the many hours it took to bring this together.
Please feel free to submit suggestions (to info@sphoa.ca) as to how we may be able to improve the Association and the website.
It was suggested that Homeowners Insurance is tricky to find; if residents could submit who they have had success with, we could post a list for others to find insurance more easily.
We hope to have more meetings in the future. We met capacity at the meeting room in the library, so the next meeting will likely need to be moved to a larger venue.