Blogging leads to Print Press on Park Closures

Check out the expansive coverage of the situation facing residents in Raleigh’s Homestead Village Mobile Home Park in this week’s Independent Weekly. The story, “Paradise Lost: Mobile Home Park Residents Caught in a Catch-22″ is another example of the crisis of park closure that plagues many communities in the country.

Bob Geary, a writer with plenty of experience covering planning board and development issues, visits with Claudia Shows, the Estradas, the Bryants, and the Webbs. His story explains the concrete problems facing these households. He then links their plight to more systemic troubles that corrupt the sustainability of homeownership for residents of mobile home parks.

This story came about, in part, due to the power of blogging. Mr. Geary noticed the story while researching for issues on BlueNC. It was a diary entry about the situation at Homestead Village that piqued his curiousity. The rest is his own footwork. This points to the power of blogging to elevate issues into the consciousness of the public.

Its a good story for a number of reasons. First, it links the issue to some specific legislation working its way through the NCGA. There is a discussion of Susan Fisher’s bill (H1700) which will work at the margins to make park owners more willing to sell to nonprofits. Geary also gives readers the phone numbers of all of the members of the Raleigh Planning Commission Committee of the Whole — the very group that will decide the rezoning of this park, and accordingly the fate of the families at Homestead Village.

The online version of the story even has a link to the Independent Weekly’s 2007 story on the issue of abandoned mobile homes in North Carolina.

~ by samsondoggie on July 10, 2008.