This letter is for the readers of the Cape Gazette and to Rep. Ruth Briggs King:
Rep. King, I have recently heard about your Meet & Greet Feb. 20 from someone who attended. Needless to say, it is very easy to discuss what I was informed you said, because it is the same unverifiable statements and the same comments, and the same misinformation and the same unworkable solutions and the same old, same old, same old rehetoric you have been spouting off for the last two or three years.
Perhaps that is why you had a very small attendance. People who are living through the problems in manufactured housing have heard it all before, first from the community owners and then from you, their puppet. It is as though they had a hand on the back of your neck and they made your lips move while the words came from them. The words are their "words", and their "solutions" and their "plans." And you continue to preach their unverifiable numbers, based on maybe three or four communities these particular landowners own.
Do you really believe that only 25 percent of people living on leased land are permanent residents? I can tell you of four communities I have a personal knowledge of, three have 100 percent permanent residency and one has at least 65 percent.
I understand you visited communities in your district that have bad water and sewer. When did you do this? What are the names of the communities you visited? Why wouldn't you reveal the names? If these communities have these problems, the owners are violating a number of laws and are causing their residents real health issues, and they need to be held accountable.
I understand you want to sponsor a full disclosure bill for all Delaware homes, stickbuilt and manufactured, to include definitions on road conditions? I really hope I am misinformed, because if a stickbuilt home is in a new development, usually the roads have not even been completed. How does that possible relate to a manufactured home community where the roads are allowed to go unrepaired, with large potholes and general sewer and water conditions that look like we live in a third world country? The situations are not comparable.
Perhaps the scariest idea you have repeated at many meetings is your (i.e. the landowners) desire to have a rental assistance program and you (i.e. the landowners) want to raid the RTA (Relocation Trust Authority) funds to do it. Those funds are collected from me and thousands of others every month along with our lot rent. They are being paid for by us to provide some financial assistance to the homeowners to help in moving homes if the landowner decides to have a change of land use and our homes must be moved out or destroyed if unmovable.
In the event a home cannot be moved (and many, many can't be) we would at least receive some of our investment back. This is our money, collected from us and even the $1.50 that the landowners contribute is in reality, paid by us when they figure it into our yearly lot rent increases.
The landowners have been trying for years to raid that money and you want to help them?
One last question, for the record. Last year you abstained from voting on our rent justification bill even though your district includes many manufactured home communities because of an "alleged" conflict of Interest. I understand two uncles owned a trailer park in Rehoboth? I am now led to believe that that conflict of interest no longer exists because the trailer park has been put in a trust?
Last year you were running against an opponent for re-election, and a very pertinent question begs to be answered. What was the date the trailer park was actually put in a trust? Before, or after the election? Wouldn't it be convenient if it happened afterwards, so you could claim your conflict as the reason for abstaining, in the hopes the manufactured communities would not be angry that you could not represent them in an issue so important to them?
And that would also mean that now that it is a non-issue and you can act like you are representing your constituents, even when you vote against their wishes.
Do you really think we don't know what is going on? We do and we have long memories.
Dorothy Boucher
Lewes
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