By Hannah Spence
Briny Breezes residents who want to renovate their mobile homes won’t be able to do much to them without also having to raise them higher to meet new FEMA flood elevation requirements.
Any upgrade that exceeds more than 50% of a mobile home’s value — and residents won’t be able to factor in the underlying land value — will require a property owner to meet new building elevations set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, officials said at a Jan. 24 Town Council workshop at the Community Center attended by dozens of residents.
The updated FEMA maps raise the base floor elevation by one foot in most of Briny Breezes, going from a base level of 10 feet NAVD (a reference system used by engineers and surveyors) previously to 11 feet NAVD as of December. Many older homes are not even at 10 feet NAVD.
The information didn’t sit well with many in attendance.
“I just feel like there is no leeway,” said Camille Scrip, 64, who has lived in Briny Breezes for four years after moving from Salt Lake City. “There is no taking into consideration the age of people who mostly live here. Also, we can’t get insurance where we live already. So, I’ve kind of written off that if something big were to happen to my trailer, I’d just lose my home.”
FEMA’s standards can be difficult to understand, and the town held the workshop for residents in order to clarify some of the issues.
“There’s a lot of talk both nationally and locally about sea rise and FEMA,” said Mayor Ted Gross. “Being a coastal community, [there is] a certain level of anxiety for some people because we may feel more vulnerable due to our geographical location. This workshop was set out to kind of settle people and have them understand it.”
FEMA’s new, higher base floor elevations are triggered in two ways. First, if people are replacing their mobile or manufactured homes, no matter what, they are going to have to build to a higher elevation.
The second way is if an owner does renovation work that exceeds half of the home’s value, not including the property’s land value. Because the value of mobile homes and manufactured homes can be relatively small, even a minor renovation can send an improvement project’s cost over the 50% threshold.
So, if the Property Appraiser’s Office has placed an assessed value of $11,562 on a mobile home, and a land value of $200,000, the most an owner wanting to install a central air conditioning system could spend without having to conform to the new FEMA elevations would be $5,781. In some cases, raising the elevation could mean replacing the entire mobile home, officials said.
During the workshop, Scrip said if she were to put a new air conditioner in she would be forced to raise her trailer, which would be too much of an inconvenience. Installing central air would also require her to upgrade her electrical to make her home safer, which would put her above the threshold. She was told by Building Official Deborah Nutter that she could appeal in that case, but was also told no such appeal has ever been successful.
Scrip’s neighbor David Duncan White said he was not surprised when he heard an appeal has never been granted.
“They rarely are because this has to do with FEMA and the federal government,” said White, who said his background is in building permits and in planning. The federal government doesn’t “want buildings to be built in flood zones and flood tidal areas which could put somebody at risk of life and/or property value,” he said.
White, who is joining the Town Council in March after he was the only one to file for an open seat during the election qualifying period in November, is facing the situation himself. Speaking to The Coastal Star, he said he wants to make improvements to his own mobile home and has applied for some permits — one of which has not been approved, he said, because of FEMA regulations.
“I think that there may be things that the town and the HOA board can do about how we define who we are, what we’re going to look like, and how to keep the community safe and good-looking,” White said.
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