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Altogether, in mobile home and addition, I have about 850 square feet. My place here in Florence (population about 8,000), about halfway up the Oregon coast, is one of about 550 in Greentrees Village, a gated mobile home park for seniors and owned by the residents. Rhododendron, salal, huckleberry, wax myrtle, and a variety of flowers and shrubs screen the houses from each other. My back yard is mostly filled with bushes and Douglas firs. Behind me is a housing development and the Florence airport.

Prices for Greentrees homes range from eighty thousand (I paid fifty thousand for mine eleven years ago) to over two hundred fifty thousand for a few of the double-wides that overlook the Siuslaw River, which runs through Florence on its way to the Pacific. I put ten thousand dollars down when I bought my place and have a 30-year mortgage of forty thousand. My monthly payments, which include principal and interest, real estate taxes (about $600 a year), and homeowner’s insurance come, in 2008, to $373 a month. The monthly Greentrees lot owner’s fee, which includes water and sewer, trash pickup, TV hookup, use of the park’s pool and tennis court, is $146. My hot air furnace, water heater, stove and refrigerator are powered by electricity. Last year my electric bill averaged $70 a month. It's probably $10 more a month this year.

For anyone thinking of buying a mobile home in a park, whether for seniors only or family, I’d strongly suggest the park be owned by its residents, who can then control park fees. Numerous complaints have been made lately about park owners raising rents so high that seniors living on fixed incomes can no longer afford living in a park. Buying a mobile home can be easy; getting rid of it in a high-rent park, especially if it’s an old unit, can be almost impossible. I was fortunate that the park in which I bought my place is owned by its residents, many of whom volunteer to perform a variety of park maintenance tasks.