In Recognition of the Highest Achievements in Manufactured Housing
Ed Evans is the managing partner of EPM, owning and running manufactured home communities, having started his first property in 1970. He has been a partner or owner of 10 communities and runs a home retail center. Evans was inducted into the RV/MH Hall of Fame in 2014. He has served on the board of WMA, founded the Manufactured Housing Educational Trust, and helped organize the California Manufactured Housing Institute.
What do you view as the biggest accomplishment of your career?
When I started in the business, I had built some apartments and I didn’t like having to deal with lost keys and garbage disposals, so I looked at mobile home parks and thought it was a great idea. I came in with my partner Don McCalla, and decided we should build a mobile home park but we didn’t like the way they were built. If you asked the city, their opinion was that mobile home park should only be on the edge of town next to landfill or something. We wanted to do it better and crossed the state of California two or three times figuring out how to do it better. I think we accomplished that over a period of years. At Lake Park Santa Ana North, for example, we turned the homes around to face a pedestrian mall we put in, put a berm on the back of the park, and put a fence up on it to hide the rear of the homes, we put in garages, put the homes on a foundation, convinced builders to reverse the floor plans in some cases so the orientation was right. From dropping with a crane to finishing the landscape for the new owner it took us 21 days, beginning to end. We did a lot of unconventional things that are more common today. At the time the mantra was “build an elaborate clubhouse” and we put that same idea across the board rather than in one building. And we were always competitive, we priced everything really well. I mean, we never had anyone thank us for cheap rent, but I think we were successful.
What work or life skill do you give the most credit for your achievements?
The effort put into the organizations like WMA and CMHI. It’s the involvement and encouragement I put into people getting engaged and working at the capital. I did have people ask me at times if I was a lobbyist. They certainly saw a lot of me, there were many, many trips to Sacramento.
MHInsider is a publication of MHVillage and is the premier source of manufactured housing news with a national audience of manufactured housing professionals dedicated to producing and delivering high quality, affordable, off-site built housing.
