Wednesday, January 10, 2007 Osmeña: The coming of trailer parks By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
THE early migrant settlers in Cebu, while awaiting a more permanent place of settlement, had mobile stilt houses made of nipa and bamboo that can be moved to another location.
In America, settlers had covered wagons which played such a historic role in the settling of migrants, considered to be the first effort to provide the protection and comfort of a home-away-from-home.
President Arroyo signed Executive Order 190 establishing a nautical highway connecting all the islands in our country. The nautical highway will allow our dynamic and characteristically restless people to use a mobile or trailer home.
Our country’s over 80 million people will eventually adopt the use of mobile or trailer homes to settle in different parts of the country. At the outset, a distinction must be made between the types of successors to the covered wagon: the less expensive travel trailers, and the modern mobile homes that contain up to four bedrooms and two baths and which measure up to 12 feet in width (expandable to 24 feet) and up to 70 feet in length.
Although travel trailers and mobile homes are often built by manufacturing plants, the former are strictly personal fixtures with some features of an automobile. But statutory provisions of a number of American states consider mobile homes, once positioned in place, to possess the characteristics of realty.
Soon, with the popularity of mobile homes and with the increasing demand for space and facilities needed to supply the necessary services will then require the development and management of modern mobile home parks all over the country.
Today, the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) and local government units (LGUs) have no existing mobile park planning guidelines or implementing rules. HLURB should lead to provide LGUs a design of a mobile park to be undertaken similar to planning a permanent subdivision.
A country-wide adoption of uniform zoning ordinances to regulate orderly development of mobile home parks. It is recommended that subdivision regulation be prepared so that entire residential areas are devoted to mobile homes and that no other use of the land be permitted other than neighborhood shopping and utility areas that serve the inhabitants of mobile homes.
The mobile home could be a multi-billion peso industry. Sixty per cent of the over 80 million Filipinos settled in Luzon are just anxious to travel with their mobile or trailer homes to the southern islands of our country.
The nautical highway will eventually interconnect Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao through the roll-on and roll-off vessels allowing mobile or trailer homes easy movement without the use of port handlers.
The mobile home differs from conventional housing in that it is finished inside and out to the last detail before leaving the factory. All furniture and furnishings, including rugs, draperies and blinds, are in place. Savings obtained through belt-line assembly are further increased by wholesale pricing of kitchen, heating and cooling equipment.
Mobile homes are designed luxuriously to offer more and more home quality and less mobility. The compactness of mobile home construction offers more utility and convenience in the use of space than does the construction of conventional homes.
Because of the welded unit body construction, its upkeep is more economical.
Built-in bureaus, beds and appliances make housekeeping easier for senior citizens and busy working couples. A single purchase includes not only the roof over their heads, but all the furniture and bulky appliances such as stove, refrigerator, washing machine, and many optional extras.
