Mobile Home Park News Briefing

(The Center Square) – Legislation designed to protect residents in Pennsylvania’s manufactured home communities has been stalled in committee for a year, leaving homeowners, residents, and the industry itself in limbo.

BARNSTABLE COUNTY, Mass. —

The state’s highest court has ruled against residents of a Cape Cod mobile home park who wanted to buy their community — but the decision could make it easier for other manufactured housing residents in Massachusetts to do the same.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday that residents of Pocasset Park in Bourne did not meet all the legal requirements needed to purchase the park under the state’s right of first refusal law.

That law gives manufactured housing residents the opportunity to buy their community before it is sold to another buyer, as long as they meet certain requirements and match the...

DEWITT TOWNSHIP, MI - Rebecca Jackson moved out of her home of seven years at the end of March.

Jackson, 52, now lives five minutes down the road, but she still misses the animals that wandered through her yard at Kristana Mobile Home Park in DeWitt Township, about three miles north of Lansing.

“It’s been really hard on me. We don’t see the deer. We don’t see everything we had out there,” she said. “On a bad day, we’d go out, sit and watch them. It seems like they took it away.”

The aging mobile home park, once slated for redevelopment with a $2 million grant from the state, now sits vacant: condemned homes, overgrown grass...

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) - Rockford’s Code and Regulation Committee advances a proposal that would see a change of ownership for a mobile home neighborhood along South Main Street.

The committee approved the special use permit for a planned RV park in a 3-1 vote, with Alderman Tamir Bell being the sole vote against the measure.

If passed by the full council, River View Mobile Home Park would be owned under Midwest Yard Holdings, which has plans to change the mobile home park to an RV and “5th wheel” community, which would force current residents to move.

The proposal now heads to the full council for potential final approval.

When Brenda Dewitt moved into Hancock Heights Estates, a 100-plus site mobile home park outside Ellsworth, three years ago, she was expecting to retire and live off her Social Security for her golden years.

Now, she said, rent and water rate increases have prompted her to return to work for the first time in four years. Her monthly rent has gone up nearly $30 from last year, with rate increases varying by resident to $60 or more.

“I’ve had to go back to work, and it’s killing me,” Dewitt said. “I have two bad knees that need to be replaced, a bad lower back, but I need to work to pay the bills. My husband is 72 years old, and he...

BIDDEFORD (WGME) -- Mobile home rents are on the rise.

Residents at a Biddeford mobile home park say their monthly rent has soared.

Tuesday night, they say thought relief was in sight, as city leaders debated a new rent control ordinance. But in the end, there was no deal.

Madeline Gallant has lived in a three-bedroom, two-bath home for nine years.

And for a time, she had it all to herself.

• Also read: Sanford City Council passes mobile home rent control ordinance

“I had to have my daughter and grandson come,” Gallant said.

She says she needed to bring them in just so she could afford her rent, which has gone from $300 a month to $650 in...

ALTOONA, Wis. — For some Wisconsinites, manufactured or mobile homes might be one of the last ways they can live affordably.

However, in recent years, private equity firms have begun buying up those types of living communities, with some raising lot rent and neglecting needed maintenance. Others have gone so far as to evict everyone living there

In manufactured home parks, many residents own their homes but rent the land on which they sit. For people with that type of living situation, Wisconsin doesn’t have any protections in place for them.

Steve Parliament serves as treasurer of the Wisconsin Manufactured Home Owners Alliance. Back in...

Damien Teague has lived in San Lazaro Mobile Home Park in Boulder County, CO, for 18 years.

So when he received a Post-it on his door on March 20 saying that the owners were planning to sell the park for $42.5 million, his heart sank.

"The next morning, I was sitting on my back porch working with ChatGPT to explore my options, just feeling the stress of the unknowns," he tells Realtor.com®. "As I was sitting there, I also felt the stress of the 212 other households that were feeling the same thing, and that was enough for me to take action."

The medically retired Navy veteran had learned of a Colorado law granting mobile home...

READING, Pa. – During his budget speech Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro highlighted what he says is a growing housing problem across Pennsylvania.

“Christine Ziemer, who lives in Berks County and joins us here today, knows this firsthand,” Shapiro said. “Christine and her husband, Joe, who passed away late last year, they downsized in 2019 to move closer to their grandkids.”

The governor explained that Ziemer and her husband bought into a manufactured home community — a type of housing where residents own their homes, but not the land. According to Shapiro, more than 56,000 households across Pennsylvania live in similar communities.

“That’s...

Neighbors in a mobile home park say they are now paying hundreds of dollars more each month just to rent their lots.

A petition drive already has dozens of signatures from folks who live at Idelwild Acres in Burke County. Many of the people there own their homes, but they say they can't afford the steep price increase for the land it sits on.

Julia Hughes showed Channel 9's Dave Faherty the signatures on the petition drive at Idlewild Acres mobile home park. She recently got a notice that her lot rental would be going up to $700 a month on August 1.

"And they want to go up on my lot … just my lot, not my trailer. I own my trailer, they...

Roughly 20 million Americans live in manufactured houses, which are homes made in factories.

Although they’re often called mobile homes or trailers, that’s really a misnomer because their owners can’t easily relocate them. Typically, the people who own them rent the land underneath the houses from the owners of manufactured home parks. Sometimes, an owner will rent their home to someone else while paying to rent the land as well.

Manufactured homes tend to be far more affordable than other single-family homes because they have lower upfront and monthly expenses. A typical one costs around US$120,000; smaller ones, known as single-wides,...