"I've looked at that forever," said Amanda Creech Horne, 20, who lives across from the mobile home in northern Johnston County. "I'd like to see the trailer gone. It's a mess."

About 40,000 derelict mobile homes litter the North Carolina countryside, according to state and local estimates. Rusting trailers are not only ugly and unsafe, but they make it harder for rural communities to entice businesses and newcomers.

County leaders from across the state hope the General Assembly will help. They are urging legislators to give them authority to order the removal of junked mobile homes and want the state to help pay for cleanup by adding a tax of $300 to $1,500 to the sale of new and used mobile homes.

The N.C. Association of County Commissioners says the tax is necessary to curb a growing form of rural blight. The tax is similar to the $3 fee the state collects on sales of new refrigerators, stoves and washing machines to support appliance recycling programs, said Ron Aycock, executive director of the commissioners group.

"We have removed those from the roadsides and illegal dumps," Aycock said. Mobile homes are "a more complicated issue, because the merchandise is much larger, but it should work."

The people who make and sell mobile homes admit that older models lurking in the woods are an embarrassment but say the tax on sales would be unfair.

"It shouldn't be just the industry or somebody who buys a new home who has to pay for somebody else's mess," said Brad Lovin, executive director of the N.C. Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade group based in Raleigh.

Lovin said local governments could target vacant mobile homes through other means, such as zoning, housing codes or the refusal to permit new homes on lots that contain unhabitable trailers.

Jimmy Starling, who sells and rents manufactured houses in the Johnston County town of Pine Level, recently asked county commissioners to waive landfill fees to encourage people to dispose of old mobile homes. He also urged them to clean up old homes using money the county collects for permits on new ones. County officials are considering the request.

A state tax would deliver a big blow to the industry, Starling said. It would add up to 2.5 percent to the cost of a new home, which averaged $59,100 for a double-wide in 2003, excluding land.

It's also humiliating, Starling said.

"That looks mighty bad if you come to buy a manufactured home, and first thing -- you get charged a fee for me to dispose of it," he said. "It's like saying you're disposable."

But the industry should welcome a well-funded effort to remove the old trailers that hurt the reputation of newer, better-built homes, said Peter Skillern, executive director of the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina, the Durham-based group that helped draft one of the bills.

"One of its biggest impediments to being accepted as mainstream housing is these abandoned homes," Skillern said.

Costly disposal

Mobile home sales in North Carolina have declined in recent years, as finance companies that provided easy credit in the 1990s quit the business and more customers opt for modular or stick-built homes. About 5,300 mobile homes were shipped to North Carolina dealers last year, down from a peak of more than 33,000 in 1997, according to federal statistics.

Still, mobile homes account for about 17.5 percent of homes in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Single-wides built before federal housing codes were enacted in 1976 are most often forsaken.

Discarding old mobile homes is not easy. If a home is still roadworthy -- a big if -- haulers will charge $750 to $1,500 to cart it to a landfill, including landfill fees, said Jim Hickman of the state Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance.

Many landfills either won't take mobile homes or require that they be cut into pieces, adding to the cost. Appliances and tires must be removed, because state law bans them from landfills.

The options dwindle for homes that are no longer mobile. Private contractors charge as much as $5,000 to dismantle and haul them off. Faced with that cost, some resort to burying or burning mobile homes, risking state fines of up to $10,000.

"I've seen whole mobile homes buried with the roofs on," says Phyllis Hicks, Johnston County's building inspector.

Ray Price, who inherited the deteriorating single-wide across from Horne's Johnston County home, acknowledges that he and his brother have moved slowly to clean up the property after their parents, former sharecroppers, died in 1988.

"It was their home, the only land they ever owned. When they passed away, you kind of want to leave everything like it was," said Price, owner of Ray Price Harley-Davidson in Raleigh. "And now it's a commitment of time to try to do something."

Frances Collins of the Cleveland area in Johnston County says she also hasn't had time to do anything with her mother's beige single-wide since her mother died in 2000. Collins, an employee of a Lowe's home improvement store, says she has no plans to sell or rent the home because "people could buy a new one for what they'd pay to fix this one up."

Collins and her husband, who live in a larger mobile home nearby, eventually plan to pry off the old home's aluminum siding; she hopes to get $70 to $100 taking the scrap to a salvage yard. Most of the rest will probably end up in the county landfill.

Recycling is an option

Hickman estimates that about 30 percent of a typical mobile home is easily recycled, including siding and the steel chassis.

But those who do the recycling work say it's not so simple. Fred Talton of South Corp. in Smithfield tears mobile homes apart on site with a giant mechanical claw. He said he rarely recycles more than the chassis, which many landfills won't accept anyway.

"To be honest, it's often really not worth the trouble," Talton said. "It's labor-intensive."

Steve Brower, owner of Salvage King Inc. in Staley, outside Siler City, takes the time to pick apart old mobile homes, pulling out not only metal but parts that can be reused.

"I've sold everything out of them, right down to the kitchen sinks, bathroom sinks, faucets, doors, doorknobs," Brower said. "As long as it's in decent shape, it will sell."

Brower aims to recycle 100 homes a year but says he isn't busier because it costs homeowners about $750. "People aren't willing to pay what it takes to get it done," he said.

A handful of counties have programs to encourage people to get rid of old mobile homes. Brunswick County, southwest of Wilmington, collects and dismantles mobile homes and other derelict structures for free and has collected more than 800 in recent years, Hickman said.

Officials in most counties say they lack the money and manpower to aggressively go after old mobile homes. Johnston recently set aside $5,000 to help those who can't afford to dispose of them. It has spent $3,000 -- on one mobile home.

Staff writer Richard Stradling can be reached at 829-4739 or rstradli@newsobserver.com.

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