DANVERS - Just because Christine Donoghue’s living room has a Norfolk Island fern instead of a full-sized Christmas tree doesn’t make it any less of a home in her eyes.
“It’s a home - doesn’t it look like a home to you,’’ the Dunkin’ Donuts employee said while stroking her cat and watching a rerun of “Seinfeld’’ in her home at Shady Oaks Trailer Park on Route 1. “It has a cat, we’re doing Christmas presents, and we got Christmas lights.
“It’s a home. It’s our home. It’s been here for quite a while; I don’t think it’s going anywhere. This mobile home park has been here forever.’’
The state Department of Housing and Community Development, however, doesn’t necessarily see it that way - at least when it comes to affordable housing. Under the state law known as Chapter 40B, residential developers can bypass local zoning if less than 10 percent of the community’s overall housing is affordable as defined by the statute, and the developer meets other requirements.
And mobile homes don’t meet the law’s definition of affordable housing.
While housing data generated from the federal 2010 Census recently put Danvers 1 percentage point shy of that 10 percent affordable housing threshold, Danvers selectmen Gardner S. Trask III and Daniel C. Bennett argue that the town would well exceed 10 percent if mobile homes were counted.
Trask and Bennett say failing to reach the threshold means developers could construct buildings in Danvers that are too “expansive’’ compared with their neighboring structures.
And on Tuesday night, their colleagues on the Board of Selectmen agreed unanimously to propose a home-rule petition this spring that would ask the state to count the town’s mobile homes as affordable housing.
If passed at the Town Meeting on the third Monday in May, the home-rule petition would be sent to the Legislature for consideration.
“The mobile homes are mobile in name only,’’ Trask said at last week’s meeting, noting that there are 239 mobile homes in four trailer parks in Danvers. “They are permanent structures. They are not recreational vehicles. They don’t come and go with the seasons. Once people live there, they stay there. They have hard hookups to the sewer and water and electric. They have hard hookups to oil or propane. These are not mobile homes in the sense of the word that they can be moved or are moved after the fact.’’
Mobile homes are difficult for the state to consider as long-term affordable housing units because they usually reside on leased land as opposed to property deeded to home owners.
But Department of Housing and Community Development spokeswoman Mary-Leah Assad said the mobile homes would also have to meet other requirements to be considered affordable housing.