OSTA: Empowering Park & Marina Residents
If you are an Oregon Manufactured Home Park or Marina resident who owns their home, but rents the space or slip in which your home is located, then we are here for you.
OSTA is your support network, a trusted source of information about your rights, and your advocate for more secure housing through improved legislation.
Through these efforts and initiatives, we enhance your quality of life.
OSTA is a nonprofit, grassroots organization that seeks direction from members, avoiding a top-down approach, regarding decision-making on critical issues affecting members’ lifestyle choices, quality of life, and rights as residents in manufactured housing and floating home communities.
OSTA works to provide an expanding array of programs, information, and services to its members. It is an organization focused, not only on protecting the rights of homeowners as residents in parks and marinas but an organization that supports all aspects of manufactured and floating home living.
To enable this to happen we rely on members, teams, and colleagues, across the state who support this common vision. This work requires time, investment, and dedication to serve our 80,000+ residents and we rely solely on memberships and donations to achieve our goals.
Join OSTA Link
https://oregontenants.com/membership-account/membership-levels/
OSTA: Empowering Park & Marina Residents
OSTA Conference Update: Sept 5th
Ready to take control of your mobile home community? The upcoming OSTA Conference might be your first step toward that reality. Scheduled for October 4th at the Hilton Garden Inn in Springfield, tickets are already half sold at just $25 per person – the same price as our pre-pandemic gathering. We're particularly excited to offer a special incentive: bring a neighbor from your park, and they'll receive a free OSTA membership with their ticket purchase!
One conference highlight will be our workshop on creating effective community newsletters. After visiting parks across Oregon, we've heard repeatedly how residents want to develop their own communication channels independent of management. I'll be sharing practical tips from my experience producing a newsletter for my 70-resident community, where about half the residents aren't computer users. Discover how to seamlessly integrate digital distribution with traditional printed copies, making sure everyone stays informed, regardless of their tech comfort level.
The most transformative topic we'll explore is how residents can purchase their own parks – something that's happened successfully in places like Glenwood, Colorado, but remains challenging in Oregon. We'll discuss the complex procedures involved and examine what might be possible over the next five years. Meanwhile, we've made significant organizational improvements, securing our nonprofit postal permit (thanks to VP Rochelle's tireless efforts) and establishing a new mailing address that's already streamlined our operations. Join us at the conference to discuss these developments and other pressing issues facing mobile home residents across Oregon. Want to shape the future of manufactured housing communities? This is your opportunity to connect with others sharing the same vision.
NEW OSTA Mailing address
105 W. Bolz Rd. #1587
Phoenix, OR 97535
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Comments or Questions for the Podcast
Email: bbateman@oregontenants.com
Copyright OSTA2045,2025 Not for rebroadcast w/o express written permission. Please share and download for educational purposes with attribution.
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Well, hi everybody. Time for another OSTA Update. I'm Bill Bateman, your host. Come on in, let's get things started. Welcome to another OSTA Update. I'm Bill Bateman, one of the team here at the Oregon State Tenants Association, osta, and we have got a lot of things going on. It's so big in fact I'm going to cut this into two pieces.
Speaker 1:In this edition we're going to talk about the fact the conference is already half sold. We've sold approximately half of the tickets. That happens on October the 4th and that happens in beautiful downtown Springfield at the Hilton Garden Inn. That's technically Eugene, if you're not a native Oregonian and don't have all that information in the back of your head. But yeah, that's happening from 11 to 3, and tickets are still available. Good seats and $25 per person. That's the same price it was when we had our last conference before COVID. We've kept the price the same to make sure you can come along. And, by the way, if you want to invite a neighbor, another resident of a mobile home park, they'll get a free membership if you bring them, and that's kind of a good deal. Hilton Garden Inn, 3528 Gateway Street in Springfield.
Speaker 1:We're working on the lineup right now and one of the things I have had a lot of requests for when I go out to parks and we just, by the way, we do that. I just recently went up with our treasurer, shannon, to Canyonville to talk to an individual who's having a problem up there and talk to them and some of the things in their parks. They said you know, we have the park doing a newsletter. How can we put our own newsletter together? Well, there's no reason that you can't. And if you are new to the newsletter version business, I'm going to be giving a free seminar at the Osta Conference the basics of getting into putting out your own newsletter. It's easy, very inexpensive and you can combine it.
Speaker 1:Not everybody uses a computer. I have about half of the people in my park. I do the newsletter here in my park and about half of our 70 residents don't do a whole lot on computers. Well, we send it out as a PDF. It's an electronic file. That's really easy to do and we also print them out on a color printer and put them up by the mailbox. So if you don't feel like signing on, you've got an opportunity to get that newsletter. We'll have all kinds of tips and tricks for you, especially if you are a new newsletters person, so that's coming up at the conference. I hope you have a chance to stop by and say hi, we'll be up there, well, up until at least three o'clock taking care of business. And in the next podcast, well, we're going to have an update on HB 3054 and getting it implemented. We have already had some issues with folks trying to get around the deadlines. Trying to say, yeah, we're going to raise your rent in January of 26 to 10% Doesn't sound good. I'll have a full breakdown on that.
Speaker 1:Next edition, this edition, let's talk about parks Specifically. Parks actually do sell to residents. The good news is that happened in Glenwood, colorado, and the bad news is it's not happening much here in Oregon. That's one of the things I want to talk about at the conference what we can do to kind of level the playing field for communities that wish to buy their own park. And let's look at the mechanism here in Oregon for doing that how, what, who, when it's a complex procedure. We formed a purchasing committee here in the park and that's as far as we've got. So that's something we want to talk to. Maybe that's one of the things I know. It's one of the things I want to talk about in the coming five years. Maybe that's something that's important to you too Getting control of your park instead of seeing it sold to a large corporation. So that's coming up Kind of a big deal here for us and it is a big deal for you.
Speaker 1:We finally got our non-profit postal permit. Now that's a lot of hard work and I've got to send a special shout-out to Rochelle, who's our vice president, for the tons of work she put in to get that thing happening. It's official. We are an official nonprofit, nonprofit organization mailing we can put that little thing in the upper corner instead of a stamp mailing we can put that little thing in the upper corner instead of a stamp. And that's going to reduce our costs, which means your dollar, your membership dollars, are going further.
Speaker 1:Also a reminder and this is working out real well new address, if you want to send it to 105 West Bowls B-O-L-Z Road, suite 1587. That's in Phoenix, oregon, 97535. That number will be in the newsletter, it's on the website and it'll be on the membership forms. It'll be everywhere. We're going to hire a skywriter, I think, and put it up there in the clouds. But we do have a new address and it has already reduced a lot of the problems with people sending in a check and then the check getting delayed because it has to be forwarded from one city to another and the mail gets backed up and yeah, that's just not right for you, that's not good business for us. So that's another problem we've cleared out of the way.
Speaker 1:That's our Osta update for today, september the 5th. Come on back. I'm hoping tomorrow, or at least the day after, to have the update on HB 3054 and some more information on what's happening. Also, keep an eye out for your newsletter. This promises to be interesting. Rochelle normally does our newsletter and she is just swamped with the conference. So I have stepped up and I have said I'm going to do it this month. So no wagering please. Let's see how this comes out, but it should be kind of fun. I'm looking forward to doing that and I hope you're looking forward to reading the next issue. So that's it for this week. Cooler weather ahead At least that's what they're promising us. So stay cool, stay safe and we'll see you next time. Thank you.
