Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Johnson County leaders are standing by their residents, asking the owner of several manufactured home communities to refrain from raising rent in order to address a litany of safety concerns.

The letter, signed by Johnson County Board of Supervisors Chair Jon Green, calls on Havenpark Communities' "owners and management" to impose a two-year pause on lot rent, "while you work with residents to address these health and safety concerns."

"We feel as though this will help to repair some of the harm and hardships that these residents have had toendure during your acquisition of their neighborhood and the severe decline in services," Green...

Lawmakers supported a bill to add $3 million to a fund to help residents purchase their mobile home parks. But its fate hinges on whether it makes it into the budget.

Friendly Village mobile home park in Gorham is one of several in Maine being eyed by out-of-state investors. A bill advancing in the Legislature would help residents make offers to buy their parks instead.

Lot No. 7 of the Golden Hills mobile home park is empty right now, but a year from now, it will be the site of a unique modular home.

And, longer-term, locals hope Lot No. 7 will be the beginning of a larger trend that could help hundreds of others across Colorado and beyond.

Golden Hills residents have been working with the Neighborhood Rehab Project, Colorado School of Mines students and staff, and a local housing development company to design a first-of-its-kind modular home that’s affordable, sustainable and scalable.

The 12 Mines students — now Class of 2025 graduates — designed it during the academic year as part of the Capstone...

Glenwood Springs City Council voted Thursday to move forward with a $1.5 million contribution from the city’s 2C workforce housing fund to help residents of Mountain Mobile Home Park form a cooperative and buy the land beneath their homes.

The 40-unit park, located along U.S. Highway 6 adjacent to Bighorn Toyota, was recently listed for $4.5 million. More than half of its residents earn less than 20% of the area median income, according to city Housing Development Manager Kevin Reyes.

If purchased by a private investor, Reyes warned, the park could face significant rent hikes or redevelopment. Currently, there are no zoning protections or...

Santa Cruz County’s transit agency is sticking to a June 30 deadline for property owners of two Live Oak mobile home parks to move homes and other structures off land designated for the Coastal Rail Trail. But county officials say they have struck an agreement with one of the parks’ residents to defer any legal action against residents until they can study the issue further.

Last year, residents of Castle Mobile Home Estates and Blue and Gold Star Mobile Home Park received notices from the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. The notices said the agency had completed a boundary survey and found that some of the homes...

DEWITT TOWNSHIP, MI - A piece of printer paper stuck to Tina Riggs’ front door gave an official notice: she had four days to move out.

Riggs was shocked by the letter given to residents of Kristana Manufactured Home Park on Friday, March 28. It said due to “declining occupancy rates and the inability to maintain the community’s infrastructure,” the park would close on Tuesday, April 1.

Then on April 2, the water was shut off.

Riggs, 62, is now one of a handful of residents still living at Kristana – an aging manufactured housing community in DeWitt Township about five miles north of Lansing.

“I’m staying here as long as I can,”...

LUDLOW — Workers continued to fell trees at the West Street Village Mobile Home Community in Ludlow Thursday, the smell of freshly cut wood filling the air, mixing with the sound of a woodchipper.

Several dozen trees that once provided shade and privacy for residents at the mobile home park were reduced to stumps. Some residents say they believe the tree work was being done because they are legally challenging an increase of rent at the park.

“These were mostly all strong and healthy trees,” said resident Ethan Field, the president of the park’s housing association.

A Wyoming investment firm wants to purchase Friendly Village mobile home park in Gorham as part of a four-state, eight-park deal for $87.5 million. Lawmakers are exploring a bill that would create a three-month moratorium on the sale of mobile home parks

Hundreds of people living at a Sweetwater mobile home park are now forced to find somewhere else to live as the official deadline for their move out arrived Monday. Still, some say they're not going anywhere.

Li'l Abner Mobile Home Park is where more than 900 residents first received eviction notices last November, learning they'd have until May 19 to move out.

The owners of the park have already started demolitions of vacated mobile homes, but some residents have stayed till the end.

On Monday, the community looked as if a tornado had torn through. Some houses stood, and others were already knocked down.

In some spots, the ground was...

In addition to rising costs and threats of displacement, U.S. mobile home residents face “serious health hazards,” according to a new report from Human Impact Partners and advocacy group Manufactured Housing Action (MHAction).

As Hope Davis explains in an article in Next City, the report used tenant interviews, information from mobile home operator Homes for America, and public records to understand how poor infrastructure and deteriorating conditions put manufactured home residents at risk from extreme heat and cold, poor water quality, and unhealthy air. “In the report, researchers documented water quality violations at five Homes of...

A bill making its way through the Oregon Legislature would prevent new planned communities from banning manufactured and modular homes.

House Bill 3144 would not impact existing communities, only new communities moving forward. Manufactured units would still be subject to the same design requirements of other homes in a community.

“While successfully addressing the crisis will take many types of creative solutions, frankly, this bill is an easy one,” bill sponsor Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, told the Senate Committee on Housing and Development on Monday afternoon.

Marsh is the chair of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. She...

In late 2024, the residents of Sweetwater's Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park were told the park would close to make way for an affordable housing complex. Some community members took $14,000 buyouts, but others have stayed and filed a class action lawsuit against the park's owner, CREI Holdings, in an effort to stop the evictions. The jury's still out on what will happen to the remaining residents of the community, but the phenomenon of underprivileged locals losing their homes to a rapidly changing Miami is becoming increasingly common.

The mobile home communities that once proliferated throughout South Florida's urban landscape have one after...

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (KNOP) - The need for quality, affordable housing persists across Lincoln County.

Projects like the Mulligan Meadows Housing Subdivision and a number of apartment complexes have made a dent in the housing crisis. Tuesday, the North Platte City Council endorsed another project that would drastically aid in addressing the housing crunch as well.

Nebraska-based Chief Industries has purchased a 43-acre, undeveloped lot along East Philip Street and South Bicentennial Avenue in Eastern North Platte.

“We have an agreement to obtain the 6.13 acres north of the Twin Platte NRD. So, right now we’re going through some design...

MARSHALL — Residents of the Broadmoor Valley mobile home park said it’s a place they’ve called home — and they were calling for help to keep it from being closed down.

“We are part of Marshall. We are residents from Marshall, and I want to stay here,” resident Anais Rodriguez said during the hearing.

“It would be really hard for me to start all over,” another resident said in a written statement read at the hearing.

More than 60 people, including Broadmoor Valley residents and Marshall area community members, attended a public hearing held by the Marshall City Council on Wednesday night. The city was required to hold the hearing as part...

The eerily quiet lull on Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park’s 112th Avenue is routinely interrupted by the clang of a demolition crane. In just four months, half of the mobile home park in Sweetwater, Florida, has been razed to the ground. An old hibiscus bush nurtured by one family for decades is gone. A handful of mobile homes sparsely populates the once-packed community, giving way to a towering new development and leaving ample space for its inevitable replicas across what used to be affordable housing.

Despite an ongoing class-action lawsuit, tenants have chosen to evacuate their own homes before a May 19 deadline in order to secure a...

This story is the first in a series on manufactured housing and solutions to help mitigate threats facing mobile home residents, from private equity ownership to climate change.

BUENA VISTA – Jerry Champlin had a plan to help ease the housing crunch in Buena Vista. Why not build a dozen tiny homes around a central courtyard on a residential lot a block from downtown and rent them out for $1,000 a month? 

He bought a small home on a big lot in 2019 and floated his plan. Six years later, he’s about to start renting. But the plan, pushed and shoved by local rules and soaring costs, has changed. 

He’s now stacked 21 shipping containers around the courtyard in a community he’s called BV Basecamp. He built 16 units in 17 of those steel boxes and the rest are community spaces for office work, storage and studios. 

And...

After a lawsuit that spanned almost five years, Pocasset Mobile Home Park residents have asserted their right of first refusal to purchase the park. The Barnstable Superior Court ruled in favor of the homeowners on March 27, allowing them to retain control of the land beneath their homes.

Bradenton Beach city commissioners voted unanimously May 1 to direct building official Bill Palmer to determine whether compliance measures are necessary for a parking lot at 205 First St. adjacent to the Pines Trailer Park.

The vote followed a public hearing where representatives for the trailer park owner, Pines Park Investors LLC, residents of the park and their respective attorneys and others shared concerns and context regarding the parking lot.

PPI, managed by developer Shawn Kaleta, purchased the parking lot and the trailer park in 2023 from the Jackson Partnership LLLP for $16.2 million. Under the previous ownership, Pines Trailer...

Allan Ayotte, 69, lives in a mobile home park in Norridgewock. He retired at 67 years old due to health issues with no pension or retirement funds; so when he saw a mobile home for sale within his budget, he bought it. He lived there for three months before the owners sold the park, and Ayotte says he received notice that rent would be increasing 93%.

Ayotte told his story in testimony for a bill that would prevent just such dramatic rent increases in  parks like his, LD 1723, “An Act to Amend the Laws Governing Manufactured Housing Communities to Prevent Excessive Rent and Fees Increases.”

“Less than probably an hour after they posted...

Robin Zorich and her husband have lived seven years at a manufactured home in Woodland Park East, a 55-year-old mobile home park north of Vancouver, Washington. Although she owns the house, she rents the land it sits on.

The couple downsized from their house in Vancouver, where they had lived for 20 years, before moving into the mobile home, believing that it was easier to get around in a single-level home.

Their rent has gone up every year, rising from $610 when they purchased the home in 2017 to $1,300 per month. These days, they’re cutting costs to make the payments.

Yet a reprieve came Sunday when the state House and Senate passed the...

A bill making its way through the Oregon Legislature would prevent new planned communities from banning manufactured and modular homes. 

House Bill 3144 would not impact existing communities, only new communities moving forward. Manufactured units would still be subject to the same design requirements of other homes in a community.

“While successfully addressing the crisis will take many types of creative solutions, frankly, this bill is an easy one,” bill sponsor Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, told the Senate Committee on Housing and Development on Monday afternoon. 

Marsh is the chair of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. She...

After decades of deteriorating conditions and hundreds of police calls, a troubled Aztec mobile home park is set for transformation. New owners plan to address crime, blight, and infrastructure issues that have long frustrated city officials.

The San Juan Mobile Home Park, located at 305 N. Light Plant Road in Aztec, was recently purchased by Capital Communities, which operates 70 mobile home parks across the U.S. Built in 1960 with over 85 spaces, the park will now operate under new regulations, and cleanup efforts are already underway.

The new owners have informed residents of their policies, which include the removal of non-running...