A Double-Wide Dream Home at a Bargain Price

We just finished reading “Not Your Parents’ Mobile Home” (April 11) and are amazed! I know the cost of living in the L.A. Basin is quite high, but this is almost unbelievable. We live in central Missouri, and I spent most of my working years in Kansas City. We retired to 40 acres of rolling Ozark forestland about 10 miles north of the Lake of the Ozarks and put a deluxe double-wide on our land. We have 2,300 square feet, four bedrooms and three baths sitting on a full basement, which gives us almost 4,600 square feet of usable space.

Our home has 8-foot flat ceilings and drywall throughout, is heavily insulated and has deluxe doors, windows, plumbing fixtures, etc. Including the house, land, well, septic system and virtually everything, I figure we have perhaps $150,000 invested. We don’t have all of the urban amenities this far out, but there is a nice little town just three miles away, and shopping for virtually everything within 30 miles. Our closest neighbors are about a quarter-mile away.

We have a sizable herd of deer that stops by regularly to check for snacks, several turkeys and a pair of foxes getting ready to den -- my kind of neighbors. Crime is almost unheard of in this area.

Folks, I know that Southern California is one of the nicest parts of the country, but if you get tired of working yourself to death for the inflated prices out there, come visit us in the Midwest. Your California equity could set you up like a king here.

Don and Hanna Mininger

Stover, Mo.

So, $400,000 trailers are now “affordable housing.” And then you have to pay rent to park them somewhere. The outrageous price of housing in Southern California is the direct result of low supply and high demand. Why the low supply? In the same section is an article about a woman who managed to stop the construction of 3,050 homes in the Simi Hills. As long as this continues, with land being pulled out of use because of some obscure bug or plant, or some Indian group suddenly discovers the land has heretofore unknown religious significance, home ownership will be only for the really, really rich.

George Johnson

Running Springs