The Good Hope City Council had the first reading Monday night of an amendment to its zoning ordinance that is meant to simplify the city’s rules and procedures surrounding mobile and manufactured homes.

Under the amendment to the ordinance, new manufactured homes can only be installed in the city’s existing manufactured home parks or installed as a replacement for manufactured homes that are already in the city. Any new manufactured homes in the city will also be required to be no more that 15 years old.

Anyone already living in a manufactured home is grandfathered in to the amendment, and if they wish to replace theirs with a newer model, that will be allowed as long as they follow the new procedures set out in the amended ordinance. However, installing a manufactured home on an individual basis will no longer be allowed in the city.

“You just can’t come out and buy a lot of land outside of those parks and put one,” Mayor Jerry Bartlett said.

Any new manufactured home parks in the city will also require a license and will have to follow specific requirements and procedures before they are allowed, but Good Hope is already fortunate to have two manufactured home parks already in place in the city that have plenty of room, Bartlett said.

“Most municipalities as small as us don’t have one, much less two,” he said.

City Planner Corey Harbison said the city currently allows manufactured homes to be installed individually upon appeal, which requires a public hearing with the city’s Board of Adjustments.

When there is one landowner looking to put a manufactured home on their land and surrounding landowners who don’t want that to happen, a public hearing on the issue can devolve into fighting between those neighbors, and several landowners have approached the city about changing the ordinance to prevent that from happening, Bartlett said.

“Our five guys on the Board of Adjustments have went through some really hard-fought meetings where people got their feelings hurt, and they’re neighbors,” he said. “I just hated to see that, and I think this is fair.”

After Monday night’s first reading, the ordinance amendment will next be on the agenda for the council’s Dec. 28 meeting for a second reading and consideration for approval.