Mobile home parks are often like villages in which residents rarely tread beyond their familiar territory – yet there are huge benefits for park owners in helping to make their connection to the community at large. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how mobile home park owners can expand their residents’ support network.
Episode 423: The Win/Win Of Connecting Residents To The Outside World Transcript
Back when I self-managed my first mobile home park, Glen Haven, down in Dallas, about five miles south of downtown Dallas. I was in the park one day and a resident asked me, "What are all those buildings on the horizon to the north?" And I said, "Well, that's downtown Dallas," and they said, "Oh, okay." And I said, "Have you never been to downtown Dallas?" And they said, "No, I don't really venture that far out of the park." This is Frank Rolfe from the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Many of our residents don't really go far beyond the boundaries of that little village, that little community of the mobile home park. They're perfectly happy staying there, going to work, coming back, and most of their circle of friends and their support network are right within the confines of the boundary of the mobile home park, but there's a big world out there. There's a lot going on outside the confines of the park itself, and if you can help reorient people into the many services available out in the big outside world, it can really benefit them and it can also benefit you.
Now, the first thing I would throw out if we're talking about connecting people to the outside world, is to help introduce them to the various assistance programs if they ever have financial problems. Many people do not realize that there is a pretty healthy network of groups that will help mobile home park residents in times of need, in times of emergency, to help cover their rent. Some of these are faith-based out of different churches, others are actual groups that belong to the government, some assistance programs outside of Section eight, things where people give money to those in need in times of extreme trouble, but many residents don't even know this exists. So the first thing you might want to do is to compile a list of all of these different groups that render aid and distribute it to residents, particularly when they haven't been able to pay the rent because something terrible has happened. Maybe their car broke down, or someone broke their leg in the same day, maybe they got laid off from the factory, but don't let them fight it out alone.
Show them that there are people they can go to and request financial assistance, and of course, your benefit as the park owner is that people will be able to pay the rent and not have to be evicted. Now, another thing we've learned in the outside world are that, when we have our typical annual spring cleanup events, these are events where we try and get the whole park galvanized to making the park look its best. We bring in a roll-off dumpster and effectively everyone goes lot by lot trying to do their fair share to making things nicer. Throwing away trash, throwing away tree limbs, maybe painting a deck, things of that nature, things where they can't get injured, and we give them goggles, we give them gloves. We also give them a free lunch. We provide typically hot dogs or pizza, Mexican food or barbecue, but what's interesting about these events are that more people come in from the outside than do from our resident base, because prior to those events, we go to all the other nonprofits.
It can be everything from the Boy Scouts to the Girl Scouts to sororities and fraternities at nearby colleges, Lions Clubs, the Rotary, and you would be shocked how many of these groups are more than happy to contribute volunteer labor, because it's part of their mission, and they feel they must do a certain number of hours of service as part of their membership. So if you want to go and tap into the outside world as far as making your park better, it's a really good idea. We once did a spring cleanup event at a mobile home park, and later one of those groups, I think it was the Rotary Club, came to us and said, hey, we want to go ahead and make your playground area nicer. We want to build you a really expensive playground area at no cost to the park at all. We just want to do that because we do these certain events annually, these good deeds, and we've decided your park is the recipient of this year's good deed. Once again, huge benefit to the residents, but also huge benefit to you as the community owner. Also, many of your residents are in need of things that used to be in the mobile home park that perhaps you've gotten rid of, because they just made no longer enough economic sense.
One of those typically is the park laundry room or laundry building. These old items that harken back to an earlier era when people did not have washers and dryers are typically in terrible disrepair, and a lot of parks, what they do is they just demolish them. Others say, well, let me look here, based on the gross receipts of the laundry building, there must be in this park of 80 homes, maybe six people that use the washers and dryers. So let's find a use that more can enjoy, and those buildings often become like community centers, or sometimes they're even converted into apartments, but what happens in those few people that were using the washers and the dryers? Well, there's typically other laundromats very near to the park, much nicer, newer, better machines, maybe a pinball machine or something to entertain you while you're waiting for your laundry buzzer to go off. Let people know where these things are. If you have a a mobile home park with a pool, and you're considering it shutting it down because it doesn't meet any of the codes currently, mom and pop let it go just totally down the drain.
It needs new decking, it needs a new drain. It's just shot. Rather than just cut those people loose, the few people who were using the pool regularly, show them where the community pools are. If you're feeling good good-hearted, you might even go ahead and pay for their annual pass to the community pool. It's not very much money, it's like $50 per household, but once again, the more that you orient people to the fact there is a world beyond the mobile home park, once again, they are gaining and you are also benefiting, and speaking of going to the larger world out there, another thing you can do that will benefit you and benefit the residents is to sponsor the local football team and sponsor the local softball group, because these things help to pump up your resident sense of pride in the community. So what I'm doing is I'm elevating the property, maybe buying a mobile home park that's in horrible condition, bringing it back to life, and I'm also elevating the PR, so that I get more people who want to live there.
And people who thought poorly of the park suddenly like it again, and in becoming a part of the good old boy network by becoming an active member of the greater community, joining the Chamber of Commerce, writing small checks to different groups to reorient them with the mobile home park. How do I stand to benefit from that? Well, typically, I will probably have less stress from any issue with the city because I will be viewed as a good neighbor. A positive force in the community, not a negative, and my residents will be happier living there because once again, they're they're friends and neighbors had greater respect for them living in a community that's attached to the outside world. Also, it doesn't hurt, because many of your residents, sure, they could go to AI. They could try and go to Google, but some of them don't have computers and some of them don't know exactly how to navigate it if they did.
It doesn't hurt to create giant lists of all the things that go on in the community, where all of the churches are, where all of the parks are, all the different programs that are available to people, because the more you get your residents in touch with the surrounding area, the happier they will be and the more likely you will be to retain them as customers year after year. So once again, you being the grain of sand that makes the pearl, you being the catalyst in connecting your residents to that big wide world outside the confines of the park, is going to benefit you and it's going to benefit them. It's a true win-win for everyone involved. This is Frank Rolfe from the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.