Living in the Hilltop Mobile Home Park for 31 years is one of the only constants Ronald Young has ever known.
But in less than three months, Young, along with the other residents of Hilltop, could be forced to leave his home behind.
Matthew Rooke, a spokesperson for the Hilltop Residence Association, said residents must leave by February 2013 after the owners of the park chose to sell it to developers.
Because of this, community members spoke at the College Township council meeting last night to ask the council to give their support that the land remain zoned as a mobile home park.
College Township council member Daniel Klees said the Hilltop Mobile Home Parks area is currently zoned for mobile home parks, and said the developers who purchased the land want to rezone it.
"It could be a six, nine month process to go through," Rooke said. "For the residents at Hilltop, we don't have that time."
Klees said community members and residents from the park wrote in letters to the council asking them to vote against the rezoning of the area.
Klees said many people's letters focused on the non-rezoning as well as asking what the council could do to give the tenants more time to give a counter offer for the land in lieu of the other company.
He said in other states there are examples of a cooperative purchase by the owners of the mobile homes so it becomes a tenant owned property, and said this is probably the model many letter-writers were following.
However, Klees said the closing of this park has also highlighted the need for affordable housing in the Centre County region.
"It's always been a struggle for people we call 'work-force housing' to find property in the community to live in," he said. "That's been an ongoing discussion going back probably 30 years."
Klees said there is competition between student renters and the local worker renters, and said realtors are probably able to charge students more than someone who works at a lower income job.
Robert Morris, a resident of College Township, said he wrote in a letter to the council regarding the closing of the park.
He said he had a friend who lived in the park and said he hopes the town will be able to come together to find a solution for the residents.
"If enough people put their heads together, a reasonable solution could be found," Morris said.
