Envy Apartment

Duval Mobile Home Park in southeast Houston has 182 lots." />EXPAND The Duval Mobile Home Park in southeast Houston has 182 lots. Stephen Paulsen Elizabeth Perez loves her trailer park . But if she's ever forced to move, at least she has a back-up plan. A chatty 45-year-old with a wide smile, Perez has lived at and managed the Trinity Duval Mobile Home Park in southeast Houston since 2008. Used mobile homes here typically sell for $12,000 to $38,000, depending on their size and condition, she says. She remembers one woman buying a home for just $2,000, using her IRS refund. The Duval Mobile Home Park first opened in the 1950s. It was purchased last year by Trinity Community Group , a trailer park management company — and Perez worried about the future of the park. “I kept thinking, ‘Shoot, they're going to want to tear it down,’” Perez said. “I was kind of scared.” The company promised it would keep the park operational , according to Perez. Still, Perez accepts...

HUD Update of Manufactured Home Standards Coming Soon? The agency has a proposed rule under OIRA review, with an NPRM to be published in September 2017. Aug 25, 2017 The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development apparently is about to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would update the Federal Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards by adopting certain recommendations made to HUD by the Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee , known as MHCC. The agency has a proposed rule currently under OIRA review, with an NPRM to be published in September 2017. According to the reginfo.gov website, the proposed rule is based on the third set of MHCC recommendations to update and improve various aspects of the Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards. It would add new standards that would establish requirements for carbon monoxide detection , stairways, fire safety considerations for attached garages, and for draftstops when there is a usable s...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...