Eight Dollars And Fifty Cents A Month

Ashland Planning Commission · June 9, 2026 · about 1h 50m · seven of seven commissioners present · seven members of the public testified.

The manufactured home park ordinance finally got its hearing, two weeks late, and went forward to the City Council on a seven to nothing vote. Six residents, one park owner’s agent and one flood engineer came to speak — the largest public turnout at this commission all year, and the first time this file has been able to report what the people who live in these parks actually think.

What They Said

Peter Hoyt, space 25 at Wingspread, 80 years old, a veteran, seven years in the park and 38 in the valley: “About 80 percent of my monthly budget is my social security check. I really couldn’t live anywhere else in Ashland.”

And the fact that governs everything else: “They may have been mobile when they came in the gate, but once they’ve been put on a foundation and left to sit for years or decades, they start falling apart. And with luck, maybe one in ten of the homes in Wingspread could make it out the gate in one piece.”

Deborah Stampley, also Wingspread, twenty years: “This is my life. This is my sanctuary we’re talking about.” The average sale price of a home in the park, she said, is $130,000 — “so it’s not pocket change.” On the new right to organise a purchase: “large investment groups tend to outbid the locals.”

Nancy Wilson, Wingspread, twenty-one years, almost 73: “If I needed to buy some kind of housing situation in Ashland, I would not be able to afford to. I think I’m too old to rent a room in someone’s house. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Alan Aykroyd, Wingspread, wanted longer than 180 days and did the arithmetic for why: raising millions “divvied up among, in Wingspread at least, among a hundred units or so.” He also raised something this file has not seen in any staff report on this project:

“The wildfire aspects are really of great concern to us in Wingspread, because we have over a hundred units and only one outlet. And I can just imagine if there was an emergency that required evacuation of the park, that it would be extremely difficult to get that many vehicles out onto Clay Street, where in addition there’s a new development going on there also. It’s just gonna be mayhem if we have to get everybody out in a timely manner.”

A hundred and sixteen households, one exit, in a town whose Transportation System Plan — the document that was to look at evacuation routes — is still waiting on a signed ODOT contract.

Jerry Berger of Highway 99 North brought the other hazard. The 1997 New Year’s flood devastated Navu Park and Jackson Wellsprings; he put the damage at more than 70 dwelling units. In 1998 the Rogue Valley Greenway bicycle path was built, he testified, without the no-rise analysis that state and federal rules require for construction in a floodway. His conclusion: the two parks inside the proposed new zone are in a worse position today than they were in 1997, and the city is about to count as preserved affordable housing a stock it will lose “not if it floods, but when it floods.” He added that a mitigation project there would cost less than the sidewalks and crossings recently installed at that intersection.

That is testimony, not a finding, and this desk reports it as such. It is also the only time this year anybody has told this commission that the parks it is protecting sit in a floodway.

The Owner

Dave Wright, agent for Wingspread LLC, spoke for an owner who has held the 65-year-old park for many years and, by his account, has a good working relationship with its residents.

His objection is to the right of first refusal. Extending the period from the state minimum to 180 days “could be harmful to the owner and residents” because buyers will not wait, escrow becomes very long, and an owner in financial trouble who cannot sell may end up closing the park instead. He asked for 30 to 60 days.

He also asked a fair question nobody had answered: Wingspread and Tolman Creek appear to be the only two existing city parks entering the new zone, and both appear to become non-conforming on day one. What happens when a home comes out and a new one goes in?

The Answer, With Arithmetic

Wingspread’s owner had also submitted a letter, and a commissioner who sat on the project subcommittee had read it. The letter argues that the park cannot afford an estimated $2 million to replace 60-year-old water and sewer systems, and that the new zone removes the alternative of “salvaging the land for other development.”

The commissioner accepted that the owner might well bring that forward as justification for a phased-compliance permit. Then he did the sum, out loud, from the dais:

Two million dollars across 116 spaces is about $17,000 a space, over nearly fifty years of ownership. A sinking fund of $8.50 per space per month, earning the fifty-year average risk-free rate — roughly 4.2 percent on a three-month Treasury bill — compounded over 600 months, would have fully funded the replacement. That is well under 2 percent of a typical space rent. At the actual long-run average, he said, the figure falls below $5 a month.

“This is not a problem with the ordinance. This is a management unfunded capital obligation. It is reality for the park owner, but it is reality that could have been avoided.”

This desk has no way to audit those numbers and does not need to. What matters is that a claim was made in writing to a public body and somebody on that body checked it before voting. That happens less often than it should.

What Changed Since April

The commission’s study session in April produced specific asks. Every one of them came back in the draft:

• The right to organise a purchase went from 120 days to 180. Residents had asked for six months; the chair had said 180; CASA had said 120 was workable. The consultants moved.
• “Financial burden” became “proportionate impact.” The commissioner who flagged the two undefined phrases asked how the new term would work, and staff gave a worked example: an owner adding a second entrance and exit onto the street for Wingspread would not then be required to rebuild every internal road, because the improvement is to public safety and the requirement should scale to the work. It also removes the need for an owner to open his books, since cost is now one justification among several rather than the only one.
• The limitation on adding units was deleted — the second catch from April, where a park might need extra spaces to finance the very compliance being asked of it.
• Landscaping and lot coverage moved to 65 / 35 to match R-2.

Two parks came off the map. 278 Idaho Street was recommended for removal after its owner met with staff — he came to the podium to say thank you — and Jackson Wellsprings had already been dropped. The zone now covers five parks: Wingspread and Tolman Creek inside the city, Siskiyou Village and Navu Park in the urban growth boundary, pending annexation.

The package also carries two changes that have nothing to do with manufactured housing and were folded in because the chapter was open: childcare facilities and residential care facilities, which previously needed a conditional use permit in several residential zones, become permitted outright — required by state law in most zones, and, staff noted, discretionary in single-family R-1, where the ordinance goes further than the state demands.

A public survey ran April 27 to May 31 and drew 46 responses.

The Vote

Deliberation went ordinance by ordinance at a commissioner’s suggestion, which was the right call for a four-part package.

One amendment was moved and failed, one to six. The main motion then carried seven to nothing, unamended, and the package — the development standards, the new zone, the map and comprehensive plan changes, and the separate chapter on notice of sale and tenant protection — goes to the City Council.

The assistant city attorney has flagged that the tenant-protection chapter sits outside the land use ordinance and wants further review of it, so the commission was told it need not formally recommend on that piece. It commented anyway.

The Docket

City Council study session June 15, first reading and public hearing June 16, second reading and adoption expected July 21.

Also on the council’s June 16 agenda: this commission’s two parking recommendations from May.

Next Planning Commission meeting July 14.

Two things this file will keep asking about: the ODOT contract for the Transportation System Plan, and whether anybody looks at the floodway question Jerry Berger raised before the council adopts a zone over two parks that sit in it.

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Sourced from machine-generated closed captions of the June 9, 2026 Ashland Planning Commission regular meeting. Quotations appear as transcribed, lightly conformed to natural speech, with bracketed interpolations where the repair is interpretive; the caption software recycles and garbles speaker labels, so commissioners are identified by role except where the roll call or the chair’s own words confirm them; members of the public identified themselves at the podium. Ordinance provisions, unit counts and dates are as stated in open session; the adopted ordinances are the controlling documents. Statements by residents and by the park owner’s agent are reported as testimony, including the flood history and the no-rise analysis, which this paper has not independently verified.