Madison mobile home park denied help combatting airport noise
As F-35A jets have increased airport noise, mobile home residents are being denied help due to a federal policy that some argue is outdated. A mobile home park in east Madison, east Madison has been denied help to combat noisy airport traffic by hundreds of mobile home residents due to a longstanding federal policy that some argue is outdated. The rule states that the airport must regularly assess how the sound affects its neighbors and come up with ways to limit the noise or help residents cope with its din. However, while other properties in the area receive funds to insulate their homes, Oak Park Terrace is not eligible for the same assistance. Critics of the F-35s are concerned that the planes will cause hearing problems and health issues for those near the airport, particularly low-income residents and communities of color. The airport has rejected the possibility of moving the community, but has suggested wide-ranging plans for the future.
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Noise is a fact of life for those living around the airport — at least it is for Loren Berry, a resident of east Madison’s Oak Park Terrace mobile home park, and her neighbors.
The park which borders Dane County Regional Airport, and when Madison welcomed the 20 F-35A fighter jets to Truax Field in the spring of 2023 — after years of concerns about noise and environmental pollution — their slice of land next to the airport’s long-term parking lot got even louder.
“You're just unknowingly, most likely damaging your hearing and having no idea that this is happening to you,” Berry said.
Now, hundreds of mobile home residents are being denied help to combat noisy airport traffic, thanks to a longstanding federal policy that some argue is outdated — even though other apartments and homes nearby could be eligible for soundproofing help.
Federal requirements dictate that the airport must regularly figure out how the sound affects its neighbors and come up with ways to either limit the noise or help residents cope with its din.
As the airport wraps up a years-long process determining sound impact, officials have suggested wide-ranging plans for the future, from tweaking the airport runways to shifting where the loudest impacts are felt to asking the city of Madison to restrict future development of low-income housing nearby.
But there is seemingly nothing that can be done for the Oak Park Terrace residents when it comes to the persistent noise. The airport rejected the possibility of moving the community, and while other properties in the area will receive funds to help insulate their homes, Oak Park Terrace is not eligible for the same help.
The noise study found that, thanks to the arrival of the F-35 jets, in 2027 there will be five times as many people living with an average sound level of 65 decibels over the course of a day as there were in 2022.
The noise study lists Oak Park Terrace within a zone where the planes, on average, have a daily noise level of between 65 and 70 decibels, or the sound level of a regular washing machine.
The planes, however, seem much louder, Berry said, particularly the F-35s, which replaced the F-16s that were stationed at the airfield and transitioned out in October.
“It's rather disheartening because in the trailer park, when you sign your lease, it doesn't say ‘Hey, you're actually in kind of a harmful area for decibels, over long-term exposure, this does affect your hearing,’” she said. “But they don't tell you that.”
One resident at Oak Park Terrace, who did not want to share their name out of fear of retaliation from the property management, said it’s hard to imagine how the jets could sound louder anywhere else. They shake the walls of his mobile home, rattling picture frames askew.
“We are technically closer than anyone,” he said. “I have sensitive hearing. I have grandkids. It would be great if they could do something for us … but it’s an uphill battle. They’re not going to want to help.”
Mobile home park on the outside looking in for noise help
Critics of the F-35s are concerned the planes will cause hearing problems and health issues for those closest to the airport in the long term, including low-income residents and communities of color disproportionately concentrated in those neighborhoods.
“There's so many effects that are happening, because we allow (residents) to be exposed to high noise levels,” said Steven Klafka, director of the advocacy group Safe Skies, Clean Water.
Some of those most affected live in the mobile home park, within the area deemed to be “incompatible for residential use” but not quite close enough for anyone to rectify the problem.
Oak Park Terrace contains hundreds of mobile homes, neatly lined up on streets named after various types of songbirds — but the airport always looms in the distance.
Some residents like the planes, even the F-35s, which they say make them feel safer or patriotic. Others are annoyed by the noise but have chalked it up to the cost of living where they do.
“We’re used to it. Of all the things that go on here, that’s the least of our concerns,” the resident who wanted to remain anonymous told the Cap Times. “If this is what they feel is a good location for them, then that’s fine.”
“They don’t bother me anymore,” he said of the F-35s.
This isn’t the first time that mobile homeowners have found downsides to their housing arrangements that don’t exist elsewhere. Also called modern manufactured homes, mobile homes can fill a gap for people with lower incomes as one of the few remaining sources of affordable housing in the region. But they can come with a host of challenges.
Federal funding to help soundproof windows and insulate walls to cushion the sound isn’t available for mobile homes. That means Oak Park Terrace residents aren’t eligible for grant money from the U.S. Department of Defense, funding that the Wisconsin Air National Guard plans to seek as part of the F-35s’ arrival.
That would leave moving the mobile home park as the only viable option, something airport officials rejected in the noise plan, citing a local housing shortage as the reason. And the cost to move a mobile home — which are typically only “mobile” in the sense that the house was prefabricated elsewhere and then delivered to the site — can be out of reach for most tenants.
Airports often have mobile home parks near their boundaries. If they are in the immediate area around the facility, the solution for airport officials is usually to buy the land and relocate the residents, something that has been done in Duluth, Seattle and other communities across the U.S. in recent years.
“It is sort of a tough decision and they (the airport) don't want to make it,” Klafka said. “They don't want to make some real improvements. And it's not like they have a shortage of money. I mean, they could set these people in a mobile home park up nicely in new places if they wanted to.”
Residents are not necessarily thrilled about the idea of moving.
“This community has 500 families that chose to be there because of many factors such as proximity to jobs, schools and cost effectiveness,” said Amy Bliss, executive director of the Wisconsin Housing Alliance, which advocates for the factory-built housing industry in Wisconsin.
Airport officials said they never seriously considered the idea of moving the mobile home park and have never contacted the park’s owner, Illinois-based Lakeshore Management, with such a proposal.
“The airport just decided that wasn't very practical,” airport spokesperson Michael Riechers said. “It wasn't in the best interest of the community. In the past, we have engaged with community members that live in the mobile home park, and airport noise doesn't seem to rise to the top of their list of concerns of living there.”
Other apartments and homes near the mobile home park could be eligible for materials to help better insulate their homes and put in windows and doors that block out the sound. But the same would not apply to the residents at Oak Park Terrace.
The airport rejected the idea of securing funding to soundproof every structure in the area closest to the airport, given it would cost up to $103 million to cover thousands of homes, a church, a child care facility and Madison College.
Instead, officials said they wanted to prioritize strategies to keep the noise down in the first place, including changing flight paths for all aircraft and lengthening runways pointed toward the north of the city, making mitigation efforts less necessary.
“A huge limiting factor to sound insulation is that it only benefits you if you're in your home with your windows and doors shut,” Riechers said. “If you're grilling on the back porch or playing in the park down the street, it doesn't change the noise that is cumulative. Whereas if we're able to extend a runway and implement procedure changes, that reduces the cumulative noise effect.”
It is at least theoretically possible to get federal funding to help soundproof homes and businesses next door to the mobile home park, but residents there are permanently barred from being eligible.
The Federal Aviation Administration has long held that mobile homes cannot be adequately soundproofed to reduce the noise to 45 decibels indoors, which is the standard the agency has had in place since the 1980s for noise mitigation.
It is unclear when the agency determined that mobile homes can’t hit the 45 decibel target. The ban at least dates to the 1990s, when residents in a mobile home park near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport were frustrated in their efforts to access funding for soundproofing.
In 2022, the FAA and U.S. Department of Transportation put out guidelines to develop and implement a sound insulation program which outline that, “Manufactured structures (mobile or nonpermanent) are not practical for sound insulation treatments.”
But modern mobile homes look far different from their predecessors decades ago, equipped with large windows, stone fireplaces, hardwood floors and even wraparound decks. Bliss said they could easily be insulated like any other house.
“It doesn't surprise me that they make up rules for funding programs to specifically exclude the people that need help the most,” Bliss said. “Today’s ‘manufactured homes’ can be insulated just as any other home. They are made of the same materials, roof trusses and insulation methods.”
“Perhaps the people making these decisions are still in the 1960s or 1970s,” she said.
The number of mobile homes at Oak Park Terrace has increased in recent years, with owners adding more residents, crowding the park and, potentially, increasing the number of people harmed by noise.
This is a broader concern facing East Madison, with a number of affordable housing developments proposed for the neighborhoods near the airport at a time when more planes are flying overhead — but more units are sorely needed amid a citywide housing shortage.
Berry said she doesn’t want to move but also doesn’t relish the notion of staying and being subjected to the roaring jets for the foreseeable future.
The National Institutes of Health says repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 decibels can cause permanent hearing loss, with louder noises more quickly inducing hearing problems. Other studies show exposure to loud noises can contribute to everything from a greater risk of heart attacks to higher levels of stress and anxiety.
Those health hazards worry Berry, who wondered if there still wasn’t something that could be done to help the residents of Oak Park Terrace.
“A lot of these people have no idea that it does cause damage to your hearing over long extended periods of time,” she said. “It pissed me off. I was like ‘What?’ You’re just going to wash your hands of it and be like ‘This place doesn’t exist.’ Is it because we’re all considered low income?”