Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Last winter, I got an intriguing story tip: Many Wisconsin manufactured home communities were operating with expired licenses. 

I didn’t initially know much about these communities, often called mobile home parks, where residents own their homes but rent the land they sit on. I quickly learned they provide a critical source of affordable housing in Wisconsin and beyond — the country’s largest portion of unsubsidized low-income housing. 

Housing experts and advocates told me private equity’s growing interest in the model threatens to change that. My reporting found that Wisconsin’s government is failing to enforce basic protections for...

AY — When JoAn Gray moved to a mobile home park on Lambert Street 12 years ago, she figured it would be the last time she would have to move.

Now 82, Gray is worried that a recent $50 a month lot rent increase could be just the beginning of higher costs. Her park recently sold, and she’s worried out of state owners won’t keep up with needed improvements.

“I know there are people in that park that are barely skimping by right now,” Gray said. “This to me is really scary.”

Gray is one of several mobile home park residents who hope their local select board will implement a moratorium to slow down lot rent increases. Waterville and Sanford...

Every year, and with every new owner, Lorena Vargas would receive notice of a rent increase for the land her manufactured home sat on. She and her neighbors in the Aspen Basalt Mobile Home Park in Colorado never knew in advance how much the hike would be or why.

Home never felt stable.

“It’s a false sense of security, because even if your mobile home is paid off, you still have this continuous lot rent that could increase,” said 34-year-old Vargas, who has lived in the community for 13 years with her husband and their two children. “So it makes you hesitant to invest in improvements in your home…it’s hard to take pride in something that’s...

Sanford has plans to demolish seven mobile homes on Carr Creek Drive on the city’s eastern edge.

During a city council workshop on Wednesday, Nov. 12, code enforcement officer Joey Cox said that “they’re all deteriorated beyond habitation.”

Jon Torres, a Toledo resident and founder of Restore The Block, a neighborhood clean-up initiative, described what he saw inside the trailers.

“Deplorable, filthy and, uh, disgusting,” Torres said.

13 Action News spoke to a neighboring business that said they’re worried about a fire risk on the property because of the high weeds and dry conditions.

The City of Toledo and Lucas County Auditor website show the owner is Kingsmen Investments LLC.

An attorney for the company sent us this statement:

“KMI acquired the property in 2020 and it was operational until we closed it last year. At that time we removed 3 buildings and multiple trailers,...

Mobile home communities have consistently remained one of North Carolina's hottest real estate investments throughout 2025 — and that trend is holding steady through the waning months of the year.

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - Starting next week, the city of Toledo will begin preparations to demolish the Riverside Mobile Home Park.

The mobile home park was deemed unfit for habitation and residents have until Monday to be out.

For the residents still living inside the Riverside Mobile Home Park, they say that while they have been offered a temporary solution, they are still living with a lot of uncertainty. They wish this situation from the start would have been handled differently by the city, so they would not have to say goodbye to their homes.

“If they are worried about housing in the city, you know, fix it up themselves. I own two...

When sheriff’s deputies arrived at Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater, Florida, on Oct. 21, Ligia Siles sat on the steps of the home she’d built over 35 years, feeling powerless as she watched deputies change the lock on her door. 

“I made a video showing that I wasn’t abandoning my home, that they were kicking me out of my home,” Siles said. “They [said], ‘You can’t come in anymore. If you come in, you’ll be arrested.’”

Within hours, she and her husband were living apart because they could not find a place to accommodate them both. She stayed with a friend and he with their daughter, while former neighbors slept in cars or...

A new documentary collaboration between Arizona Luminaria and Arizona Public Media reveals the quiet crises unfolding inside Tucson’s mobile home parks and how neighbors are standing together to face them.

Watch the complete YouTube version to hear from local residents, advocates and experts. You’ll see what’s often hidden: families improvising to stay cool, neighbors organizing and elders fighting to keep the homes they’ve poured their lives into.

One of America’s most affordable paths to homeownership is slipping away.

At manufactured home parks – sometimes called trailer parks or mobile home parks – rents are rapidly rising due to large-scale buyouts by private equity firms.

Although private equity’s foray into the housing market is not new, the buyout of mobile home parks by investment firms is on the rise – with devastating consequences for residents. Over the past decade, rents in these parks have risen 45%, according to census data. Once a park is sold, the risk of eviction rises significantly in the following year.

I’m a poverty law attorney in Virginia, and many of my...

From my 30s to my early 50s, I was a tax lawyer in Big Law, Big Four Accounting firms, and banks.

I've given talks at tax-policy panels, sat on a trading floor, made $400,000 a year, and had an expense account.

During baseball season, I took clients to the VIP section of Yankee Stadium and sat behind home plate. My parents grinned when people asked them, "What does your son do?"

Big Law paid well, and it solved the cocktail-party question, but I always felt something was missing.

The hours were brutal. I was always on, 24/7. I couldn't touch, feel, or smell the product of my work. I struggled with the politics and zero-sum outcomes.

In...

A rule changed proposed as part of the Road to Housing Act passed by a Senate committee in July could make it much easier and cheaper to build manufactured housing, according to an analysis from Pew by Dennis Su and Rachel Siegel. 

The change would end the requirement that manufactured homes stay on a chassis to allow them to be relocated. In fact, only 5 to 7 percent of ‘mobile’ homes are ever moved, yet keeping the chassis can increase the cost of a home by around $10,000. “Housing experts say that allowing the chassis to be removed after installation would also allow greater design flexibility. Manufactured homes could be placed in...

EAGLE — As new ownership looks to overhaul a mobile home park, the majority of residents have formed a union in the hopes of pushing back on fees and eviction notices they say are disrupting the past calm of the park.

The union’s formation came Oct. 25 with an announcement from the Treasure Valley Tenants Union that over 80% (now 33 of 38 occupied units) have signed onto the union to engage in collective bargaining for the Elevate Eagle Manufactured Home Community (MHC) — formerly the Riviera Estates Mobile Home Park.

The park was brought under the ownership of Demetre Booker Jr., the principle partner of real estate firm Elevate...

LUDLOW, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - Mobile Home Park Tenants in Ludlow fight against major rent increases Monday night in front of the town’s Rent Control Board.

Western Mass News went to the town meeting to speak with residents in attendance.

Residents of the West Street Village Mobile Home Park took the town’s rental control board to court back in 2024, opposing its decision to increase rent from 207 dollars a month to 503 dollars a month. That being an increase of over 140 percent.

Tenants won their appeal in Housing Court and a rent roll back earlier this year, however the judge deferred the decision back to the Ludlow Rent Control Board to...

Back in August, Blue Haven residents were notified that in December their rent would go up for the second time this year, with no explanation from park owners as to why.

The increase is as high as $145 a month.

Residents like Sarah Giles-Gardner, who has a disability and is on a fixed income, said that hike is not sustainable.

“I just don't have enough money to be able to stay if it's just gonna be $145. It's too much. It's too much, I can't do it,” she said. “We need to fight back because this is not right.”

The rent increase was announced ahead of new laws meant to slow rent hikes going into effect, including one giving...

Lazy Wheels Mobile Home Park has been the bane of the city of Ceres for decades and now it’s soon to become history.

As of Nov. 1, residents were ordered to vacate the park, which abuts to the eastern flank of Highway 99 north of the Whitmore Avenue. Calabasas owner Anthony Nowaid said those who remain will be evicted.

City officials have made it clear to Nowaid that once the residents are gone, Lazy Wheels no longer exists as a mobile home park – and that it can’t ever be one again.

“The park is a mess, it needs to be cleaned up,” said Ceres City Manager Doug Dunford. “You can’t go in and put in a few boards and nails and things. It...

A day after being served papers in a federal lawsuit from mobile home park owners who say town regulations infringe on their property rights, Windsor town leaders sent a strong message to tenants and park owners alike: they’re not backing down.

In a unanimous vote, the Town Council extended an urgency ordinance that pauses any changes or closures to mobile home parks for 10 months and 15 days. The extra time will allow staff to update Windsor’s 30-year-old mobile home ordinance and “close any loopholes” that might exist, Town Planner Jennifer Sedna said.

The urgency ordinance stems from proposed changes at Evergreen Mobile Home Park,...

Sunnyvale resident Gail Rubino first moved into the El Dorado Mobile Home Park 15 years ago because it was the only way she could afford home ownership in Silicon Valley. She settled into the park and formed a community she could call her own. Now, she’s fighting to change a statewide bill that would make it easier to redevelop mobile homes in the city — potentially displacing thousands of residents.

Senate Bill 79, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, makes it easier for developers to build dense housing within a half-mile radius of public transit corridors without much say from local jurisdictions. It goes into effect in July.

State...

Mobile homes are a unique form of homeownership in that people own their homes but rent the land underneath them. In some parks in Pima County, particularly those with a master meter system where the park owner is the customer of a utility company, organizers have seen troubling reports of higher-than-average utility bills that have then led to evictions. 

Part 2 of a four-part documentary collaboration between Arizona Public Media and Arizona Luminaria, building on over a year of Luminaria’s coverage of heat and displacement in manufactured homes, looks at the story of Roseanne Aldama.

Aldama was evicted over a contested utility bill...

A shift occurred in the 1950s. Those with higher incomes bought houses, and eventually, mobile home communities cropped up throughout the country as places for people to park their mobile homes for months, years or permanently. Nowadays, mobile homes are more often called “manufactured homes.” They are assembled in factories and rarely move once they’ve been purchased and settled. In fact, more than 90% never move from their original site.

Today, around 20.6 million Americans live in a mobile or manufactured home. About one-third of mobile homes are in mobile home communities, where the residents usually own the home itself, but they rent...

Bell is moving forward with plans that could lead to the sale of two mobile home parks, prompting residents to demand answers about their futures.

The parks house approximately 350 families according to the 2018-2019 Bell Community Housing Authority annual report.

The city is appraising land and mobile homes at Florence Village and Bell Mobile Home parks and interviewing each resident. City Manager Michael L. Antwine said the process doesn’t mean Bell will sell the parks, but state law requires an approved relocation plan before the city can vote on a potential sale.

The city doesn’t expect to vote on a plan until January 2026.

Residents...

HIGHLANDS — The Borough of Highlands has announced they have reached an agreement with Scenic Highlands Owner, LLC, the redeveloper of the property formerly known as the Shadow Lawn Mobile Home Park off Route 36.

The official vote on the plan will be held at the Borough Council meeting Nov. 5 starting at 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

Highlights of the project for the property, called Scenic Highlands, include a five-story building with 292 residential units, 44 of those which will be affordable, a clubhouse and other amenities. There will also be two below grade buildings for onsite parking, with courtyards.

The redeveloper will...

Rhode Island is facing a housing crisis, and the problem could become more acute as investment firms try to scoop up mobile home parks across the state. But the residents of these trailer parks aren’t always at the mercy of outside investors. Rhode Island law allows the residents to exercise a right of first refusal if they agree to purchase the trailer park themselves.

Portsmouth Town Councilor Sharlene Patton is leading an effort to convince the residents of Sunny Acres Trailer Park to band together and buy it. They’re receiving help from an organization called the Cooperative Development Institute. As reported by the Providence...

A wall of sequoias over 100 feet fall abuts a 25-unit mobile home park in Eastside Tacoma. Crows perch in their blue-green branches. Resident Viola Stewart, who has lived there nine years, enjoys watching the wind rustle the needles.

In August, residents of the Ohana Estates at 8211 E. McKinley Ave. learned that 59 giant sequoias might be cut down. The incident prompted them to mobilize. By January, the neighbors plan to start a co-op to buy the community from their landlord, thus ensuring their housing stays affordable and the trees remain cared for.

Owner Kelly Verduin told The News Tribune on Oct. 21 that she’s owned the property with...

Mobile home parks are temporarily restricted from raising lot rents in Saco.

The Saco City Council on Monday unanimously approved a moratorium on rent increases in mobile home parks, which was awarded by hearty applause from residents of a local mobile home park.

The issue came to the forefront after several residents from Blue Haven Mobile Home Park off Route One spoke out at City Council meetings, asking for the city’s assistance.

Councilor Phil Hatch thanked all the residents who came up to the podium to speak to the Council, share their stories and ask for help.

“As hard as it was, I want you to know how impactful that is,” he...