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.
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https://oregontenants.com/membership-account/membership-levels/
OSTA: Empowering Park & Marina Residents
Joy, Community, And The Power Of Seniors At The Ballot Box
A holiday greeting turns into a blueprint for real-world change. We start with gratitude, a few comfort-movie picks, and a fruitcake story that somehow survived 14 years, then follow the thread to where community joy becomes community power. When neighbors talk over dinner or on a winter walk, patterns emerge: pressure to stop organizing, invasive surveillance proposals, and confusion about what rights actually exist. Naming those patterns together is the first step toward fixing them.
We share why HB 3054—our rent stabilization effort that critics said would never happen—passed into law, and what that win means for residents across parks. Then we get practical about the next phase: stronger enforcement, cleaner processes, and local chapters that help tenants document issues and act fast. You’ll hear how seniors, who make up a quarter of our county and vote at high rates, can shape outcomes in low-turnout elections by writing letters, showing up, and supporting lawmakers willing to put protections into practice. It’s a strategy built on steady civic habits layered over a base of trust and humor.
The throughline is simple: rest fuels resolve. We celebrate small traditions—ugly sweaters, a roadside cookout with hot dogs and chili by the Rogue River—because time to breathe makes room for courage. As we thank the legislators and volunteers helping move good policy forward, we also invite you to connect with neighbors, start a chapter, and keep the momentum going. If this message resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show. Your voice and your vote are gifts the whole community can use.
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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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Produced by Retired Guy Productions
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Well, hi everybody. This is Bill Bateman from Osta, and I'm here to not sell you anything, not to ask you for anything, but simply to say Merry Christmas and thank you for being there for us. We're happy to try and be there for you. It is the holiday season, and in that spirit, we'd like to invite you to kick back and watch some of your favorite holiday videos or movies. I'm looking at Prime on Amazon to see a list of some of the most traditional uh favorite holiday movies. And of course, you have It's a Wonderful Life, you have It's a Christmas story. Love actually is a very popular Christmas movie, as is Candy Cane Lane. So there are a lot of good films out. Uh New National Lampoons Christmas Vacation is a family favorite at our house. I can almost do it line for line. Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie, as is The Red One, which is about Santa, and stars The Rock. So there are a lot of ways to relax and enjoy. We have a holiday tradition at our house. It went on for about 14 years. Somebody gave us a fruitcake. I won't name who it was, but we got a fruitcake from somebody. Now, fruitcake is not a real popular item here in our house. So the next year we gave it back to the person who gave it to us. We kept it wrapped, of course. And uh really fruitcake doesn't get old. You can't really hurt them. This went on and on. This went back and forth, I'll say, for 14 years, until finally Hazmat came and knocked on the door and said, We understand you have an unregistered fruitcake, and I'm afraid it's going to have to be turned in. A little more serious, but I want I want to keep this light. We spend a lot of time in your ears, uh kind of tapping on your window, shaking our finger, and trying to get you involved. And I find that a lot of us are involved. I've been dealing with some letters. Folks are finding that uh they are saying when. When you've had enough, you say when. Well, that's what's happening at parks all over the state. Folks are uh using this holiday time as they're discussing with friends and family and meeting and greeting people, having holiday dinners, uh, maybe outside when you're shopping or taking a walk. They start talking and they start thinking and they start realizing, hey, wait a minute. This isn't right. I just sent off a large packet to some people up in Shady Cove, and we're going to be visiting them right after the holidays. Uh the place wants to use audio and video surveillance to keep an eye on the tenants in the park, and I've already told them they're forbidden by law from organizing. That's false, that's a lie, that is incorrect, however you want to state it. A lot of shenanigans going on out there. So let's take this holiday break, whether you're doing Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or however you celebrate at your house. And spend some time building some connections with those around you, with your friends, with your neighbors, because it's that's that is where your strength lies. Your holiday gift to yourself this year, your holiday gift to your family, and your holiday gift to your community is your strength, your time and your effort. And I want to thank everyone on the Osta board for the gift of their time, for the gift of their effort, for their countless hours of uh dealing with problems that just seem to don't want to go away. And we're still at it, we're still here, and we want to thank you for your support. Membership is continuing to grow. Thank you for that. Share this podcast with someone. Be sure to subscribe and be sure to like. We're trying to get a larger and larger number of subscribers because that makes it easier for us to get our message out. So if someone hasn't heard about us, maybe that's a nice thoughtful way to remind them at Christmas that we're out here and we're working for them. We're working for you, and what's more important, you are working for us. We are all working together towards a common goal. We have shown, and I this this is really fascinating to me. Everybody told us when we went after the rent stabilization initiative, HB 3054, it would never happen. We didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. Well, in fact, it passed, and it's the law, and it's got a lot of people pretty much on edge. Our next effort, our next direction is increasing enforcement, strengthening the existing laws, and increasing enforcement of the existing laws. So that's where we're going in the next year. Uh, we are going to be having classes to help you form associations, help you form chapters. There's a lot of good things you can do. I mentioned this in an earlier podcast, and somebody said, Really? Did you check your numbers? In our county, and I live in uh Jackson County here in uh the Medford Ashland area, we're 25% of the population. Senior citizens are 25% of the population. Seniors vote, seniors write letters, seniors show up at meetings, and that gives us, I mean, when you consider in some off-year elections, only 21% of the voters vote. If seniors become highly active, not if, I'm not going to say that. When we continue to be highly active, we can be highly influential at the ballot box, and we can help drive a lot of good work forward. Let's support the legislators who are supporting us. A Merry Christmas to Jeff Golden, a Merry Christmas to Pam Marsh. And I want to include uh Rep Neron in this as well. She's also been a part of the team. So thank you in the holiday spirit to all of you out there, to those in the legislature, to those in the parks, to those in the Osta office. Wear an ugly sweater, trade a stupid Christmas gift back and forth, have a holiday dinner, and just a little note. Holiday dinners have gotten to the point where they have to be catered, they have to be 25 courses, they have to use every dish in the house. This year, and I'll maybe another time tell you how we got on to this, but we have a Christmas holiday tradition of hot dogs. And this year, my wife and I are going up to uh to the lake. I'm sorry, not to the lake, we're going up along the Rogue River. There's a campground we like, and we're gonna pull in. Uh, we're gonna pay the$6 registration fee, and we're gonna build a fire. And this is weather permitting, of course, but we're gonna build a fire and we're gonna have uh hot dogs roast some hot dogs, have some chili, uh, all the fixings, maybe some beans, maybe not with chili and beans, but you get the idea. Take in some salads and just relax and enjoy the nature, enjoy the quiet, and enjoy each other and the strength you can build during the holiday. So from all of us here at Osta, to all of you listening, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, happy festivus, happy Lumpfest, whatever you're doing, be safe, be good to each other, and yes, we're coming back next year. We're even stronger and more excited and more revved up, so relax and enjoy this holiday season, and we'll see you then. The preceding program was a holiday presentation of Retired Guy Productions.
