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Vail Daily: Dotsero mobile home residents experience rent increases, rule changes under new ownership

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In June, the residents of the Dotsero Mobile Home Park lost their $5.8 million bid to purchase the property they live on and become a resident-owned community. Instead, former owner Jim Condit accepted an all-cash offer for the same price from an outside buyer called Three Pillar Communities, a California-based company that invests in manufactured housing across the country.

According to its website, Three Pillar Communities operates 53 mobile home parks in 10 states as of Sept. 2022. The Dotsero park is the company’s third acquisition in Colorado, following the Fairplay Mobile Home Park and RV Retreat located in Johnstown.

Three Pillar...

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Our thoughts on this story:

I love woke articles like this that portray residents not buying their park as some type of a crisis. The residents tried  to buy it during their “first option” and failed. No reason was given for the failure, but it was probably the fact that the property needed substantial infrastructure repair. The new owner is replacing the roads and utilities, and raising the rents as a result. But all the writer wants to talk about is the higher rent, not all the improvements that went with it. The writer states: “three residents confirmed that their rent increased by $125 following the road completion in Nov. 2022. For resident Sheri Payne, that hike represented a nearly 40% increase over her previously stabilized rent. The writer fails to tell you that the park’s rent is probably $300 per month under market even at that new rent level. Could the residents have completed all this infrastructure work and kept the rents low? Absolutely not. This is nonsense.

The Journal of the San Juan Islands: Housing shortage reaches critical mass

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A home ensures stability, diversity and safety for community members. In San Juan County, affordable homes are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing adequate housing as a component of the human right to an adequate standard of living. However, housing once considered a human right is now more often treated as a commodity, slowly fraying the very fabric of communities across the nation.

According to multiple local housing experts, much like the rest of the country, there’s a critical housing emergency unfolding in the San Juan Islands, and it’s only...

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Our thoughts on this story:

For decades, the government has propped up coastal areas by offering flood insurance at huge losses to the U.S. taxpayer, rather than forcing people to move inland who can’t afford the insurance. In this case, the goal seems to be how to maintain people who don’t earn enough money to live in an area to remain in place. Is that really helping anybody? Surely not when the subsidies would give them a higher quality of life somewhere else.

Lodi News-Sentinel: Update: Hundreds evacuated from flooded Acampo mobile home park; Highway 99 closed

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ACAMPO — Nearly 200 people were evacuated from a mobile home park on Sunday and Monday after another round of atmospheric rivers brought heavy rain and flooding to the area. A mandatory evacuation was ordered for the park early Monday afternoon.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office said it closed Woodbridge Road east of Highway 99 just after noon on Sunday due to localized flooding. By 2 p.m., Sheriff’s Office deputies, along with crews from the Lodi, Woodbridge, Mokelumne and Lathrop/Manteca fire departments began evacuating about 175 residents from the Arbor Mobile Home Park, located at 19690 Highway 99 frontage road.

Closer to 7...

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Our thoughts on this story:

This is going to be a real problem for California park owners as insurance rates are going to skyrocket. No wonder so many catastrophe movies (like San Andreas) are based in California. It’s not just because the studios are there. Between earthquakes, fires – and now flooding – this is becoming the place to buy property with a short shelf life.

Standard-Examiner: Riverdale mobile home park tenants offered money to help with move

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RIVERDALE — The owner of the Riverdale mobile home park that’s being vacated to make way for development is offering residents $1,500 to $3,000 if they depart early.

Some residents have expressed concern about the financial hit they may face on leaving Lesley’s Mobile Home park given the typically higher cost of renting apartments and other housing types. “As we prepare for the park to officially close on May 31, 2023, park ownership is offering to help alleviate some of the financial burdens of vacating the park,” reads the letter park management sent last Friday, supplied by a former resident.

Per the offer, tenants may get $3,000 if...

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Our thoughts on this story:

It’s the classic tale the media hates most: lot rents are too low and the park gets razed to make way for apartments. If the lot rents had been higher, the park would still be a park, in all likelihood. But the residents would have fought tooth and nail against that, and the media would have jumped on the bandwagon to publicly shame the owner. So the correct solution was to simply demolish the park and make it into a more profitable use. I have tried to explain this to the media for years now, but they refuse to accept the reality of economics. Mobile home park residents nationwide need to accept the fact that mobile home parks can be other types of uses, too, and if rents are not higher then parks will be bulldozed. You can’t have it both ways. I wish that MHAction would stop inspiring people to make themselves homeless.

ABC10: 175 evacuated from flooding at Arbor Mobile Home park in San Joaquin County

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WOODBRIDGE, Calif. — Crews were able to evacuate 175 people from a partially-flooded mobile home park in Woodbridge Sunday.

South San Joaquin County Fire Authority, Lodi Fire Department, Lathrop Manteca Fire District, Manteca Fire Department, Woodbridge Fire District and more were at the Arbor Mobile Home Park on Frontage Road to help evacuate residents and animals.

It was one of many calls that first responders have answered as some people try to leave their homes due to flooding from a barrage of winter storms.

South San Joaquin County Fire Authority said their crews were using hoses to move water away from homes in order to...

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Our thoughts on this story:

America has been under a cloud of endless insurance losses for years now – from fires to hurricanes. Given society’s obsession with litigation and the simple fact that insurance companies are businesses and are focused on profits and not losing money annually, there is no doubt that insurance in California and Florida will be endlessly harder to obtain and retain except at huge cost increases. And that will naturally translate into much higher lot rents in those markets. The woke media might as well start writing the articles now to criticize those given rent boosts, as the insurance picture in California and Florida is becoming desperate.

PRWeb: Datacomp Releases Updated Manufactured Housing Community Data from Six States

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Recognized as the industry standard for manufactured home community market analysis for more than 20 years, JLT Market Reports provide detailed research and information on manufactured home communities located in more 187 primary housing markets throughout the United States.

Datacomp, the publisher of JLT Market Reports and the nation’s #1 provider of market data for the manufactured housing industry, announces the publication of its January 2023 mobile home park comps with occupancy and other vital data on manufactured home communities from 14 markets in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Utah.

Recognized as the...

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Our thoughts on this story:

These reports are great for large, institutional owners, but you have to determine your rents the old fashioned way by calling the competition yourself. There’s just no easy way to figure out where you fit in regards to rent levels.

Summit Daily: Certain Summit County mobile home residents went about a month without reliable running water, according to a complaint filed in court

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Residents of the Farmers Korner Mobile Home Park in Summit County have faced a monthlong stint without running water in their homes, according to recent court filings. 

The water issues prompted inquiries from both the Summit County Public Health Department and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, or DOLA, which issued a cease and desist order against the park’s landlord on Jan. 3 that was then enforced by a motion filed by Attorney General Phil Weiser on Jan. 12. 

DOLA told Farmers Korner landlord Lori Cutunilli it received a complaint Dec. 23 that certain residents at the mobile park had been “without running water and/or...

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Our thoughts on this story:

The best quote in this article came from a resident that said “he’s looking to sell his mobile unit and move to housing that’s more stable. But he has yet to find anything near the rent he pays for his lot, which is $850 a month.” Absolute genius. Harass the park owner in the middle of a blizzard demanding that frozen water lines be fixed, get the State of Colorado and media involved to advance your false narrative, and then whine when the solution is to maybe have to move out. Here’s a message to everyone in the U.S.: mobile home parks are not non-profits and if you harass owners enough, they will simply put up the “Land For Sale” sign and you will be cut loose. If you want a world in which there is no economics then sign up for Section 8 apartments and let the government determine your future.

Wahoo Newspaper: El Rancho tenants given eviction letters

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ASHLAND – Five years after a group of tenants and the owner of a local mobile home park fought to keep the residential neighborhood open when the local school district sought to purchase the property for school expansion plans the owner has sold the trailer court and residents must be out by summer.

Brandon and Susan Parmer sold El Rancho Mobile Home Park at 2102 Furnas Street in Ashland to an investment company called Ashland Development, LLC.

Two days later, a letter was drafted to residents of the trailer court, which has been a part of the Ashland landscape for decades. The tenants of the 32 units making up El Rancho were...

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Our thoughts on this story:

A family owned a mobile home park. They got an offer from a land developer that’s three times its assessed value as a park. The developer told the paper “It’s an optimal location for alternative use, but that use is yet to be determined”. Everyone is mad. The tenants are mad that the park is being torn down and they are being displaced. This is what happens when residents fight higher rents and the media delights in publicly shaming owners. If the owner had raised the rents more, maybe the park would exist. But he would have had to fight the media’s public shaming, so why bother? Maybe someone should send this article to all of the above journalists?

Real Vail: Eagle Valley’s Krueger family sells trailer park in model for blocking private-equity groups

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A Carbondale-based social justice nonprofit group in December went under contract to buy a 20-unit mobile-home park outside of Glenwood Springs for $2.4 million in an attempt to buck the trend of displacement and affordable-housing destruction at the hands of private-equity groups buying Colorado parks.

The Roaring Fork Community Development Corp. — the affordable housing arm of the nonprofit Manaus — intends to transfer ownership in coming years to 3-Mile Mobile Home Park’s residents, who own their trailers but pay rent for the land on which they sit.

The sellers are the children of the late Ben Krueger, a longtime Vail Valley resident...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Boy, they sure showed the world who’s boss. A non-profit recently “went under contract to buy a 20-unit mobile-home park outside of Glenwood Springs for $2.4 million in an attempt to buck the trend of displacement and affordable-housing destruction at the hands of private-equity groups buying Colorado parks.” I guess the park owner is laughing all the way to the bank, while the non-profit puts this grand tale all over its website. Here are some real-life news bulletins for this same Vail newspaper: 1) you could have given those tenants $120,000 in cash each and they would have been much better off 2) institutional investors would never look at a 20 space park (it’s about 20% of the target size of 100 lots) and 3) $2.4 million is a rounding error in today’s America if you want to be a big shot in philanthropy. That might make you sound big at the cocktail party at the Red Roof Inn lobby, but that’s about it.

Bloomberg: The White House Is Considering Broad Actions to Expand Tenant Protections

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The White House is weighing a range of executive actions to authorize and expand protections for renters, who pay a high share of their income toward housing nationwide and face little prospect of relief from the new Congress.

Measures being mulled by senior Biden administration officials include sealing eviction records, standardizing rental leases and promoting a right to counsel for tenants facing off with landlords in housing court. Another possibility could be a federal campaign to curb discrimination against affordable housing voucher holders based on their source of income, a practice challenged as a fair housing violation.

A...

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Our thoughts on this story:

This quote says it all: “measures being mulled by senior Biden administration officials include sealing eviction records, standardizing rental leases and promoting a right to counsel for tenants facing off with landlords in housing court. Another possibility could be a federal campaign to curb discrimination against affordable housing voucher holders based on their source of income, a practice challenged as a fair housing violation.” That has to be the dumbest list of all time, and none of those things would improve the position of renters in any way. So here’s my list by comparison: “relax the UBC so that modular homes can be built on vacant city lots, offer tax incentives for residential property owners not to redevelop into a non-residential use, and expand the Section 8 program so that it is available to more people”. Of course, I win. But when you take on the Biden administration, that’s not a very high bar.

Sequim Gazette: City expands application building notification process

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Owners of local condominiums and manufactured homes will now be notified when construction projects are proposed near them in the City of Sequim.

Previously, land and property owners within 300 feet of the proposed project would be notified of an application and pending meetings and comment periods.

City staff said they’ve received requests for the change as condo and manufactured homeowners own the structures but not the land — so they weren’t being notified.

Sequim city councilors unanimously approved an ordinance change at their Jan. 9 meeting to update Sequim Municipal Code (chapter 20.01).

Councilors directed staff on Dec. 12 to make...

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Our thoughts on this story:

OK, I’m trying to be patient. Maybe some of these writers wrapped up college during Covid and on-line learning didn’t work for them. But this has to be one of the dumbest quotes of all time: “some manufactured home park residents in and around Sequim said they’ve received increased rents on land leaving them with less money to live.” Is there a way that rent could go up and they could have more money to live? This is, yet again, woke journalism in the state of Washington. You simply cannot mandate price levels in a capitalist society. That’s called socialism or communism. When the state government aspires to be less capitalist, it’s time to start moving to another state.

Spectrum News 1: https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2023/01/17/live-oaks-rent-increases

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — When Mike Runnells moved to Bullitt County in 2020, it was his refuge from a divided city. The Army veteran had been living in Louisville’s west end, where the highly controversial police shooting death of Breonna Taylor had led to ongoing, nightly protests that sometimes brought crowds of police and protesters past his Portland home. 

What You Need To Know
  •  Residents of Live Oaks in Mt. Washington have seen regular rent increases and ownership changes
  •  With each new owner, new rent and regulations follow
  •  Some residents have rent-to-own agreements with a previous owner, but they aren't being honored
  • The Census...
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Our thoughts on this story:

Lot rent of $518 per month is not in any way unreasonable. Apartments average around $2,000 per month nationwide. Yes, it’s going to keep going up. Yes, corporate owners are going to raise rents as part of bringing old parks back to life. Yes, after all the hikes they make there’s no place even remotely as cheap to live. Yes, it’s called the free market because you’re free to move out if you want to. Yes, even with higher rents the park is full. Yes, there are 10 people willing to pay the higher rent for every 1 that won’t.

When the park has vacancy it will lower rent. It has none and the phone is ringing off the wall. Why are park owners held to a higher level than milk and eggs, which have doubled in the past few years?

Moapa Valley Progress: Mesquite Trails RV Park Moves Forward

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Construction has been going forward full steam ahead at the west end of Hafen Lane in Mesquite. Nearly two years after receiving approval from the city, the Mesquite Trails RV Park is beginning to really take shape.

The site grading on the 20-acre parcel is completed, and the utility connections for the 193-space RV park have been installed. The first of three buildings to be built on the site has gone vertical. Work has also begun on the central recreational hub of the park including a large clubhouse, swimming pool, pickleball courts and various other recreational amenities.

The entrance of the park will be off of Hafen Lane. A new road...

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Our thoughts on this story:

It’s always been a lot easier to build RV parks than mobile home parks. That’s because the RV industry has done a great job of promoting itself (the “Go RVing” campaign) and people in RVs don’t go to school at a cost of $8,000 per kid to the city and county. The failure of the mobile home industry to put any money or effort into PR has created a scenario where the average American has a terrible opinion of the product.

Yakima Herald-Republic: Opinion: Trailer-park rent increases beg new rules

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You have to wonder how some people sleep at night.

Especially people like the owners of Valley Community, the trailer park at Fruitvale Boulevard and North 16th Avenue in Yakima.

Since taking over the small park in 2021, Hurst & Son — a Port Orchard-based company that deals in real estate investment, property management, construction — has raised rent from $350 a month to $600 in the past year. They’re also limiting tenants’ water use, and they no longer pay for garbage services.

Why? No reason, apparently — they just can. The YH-R tried repeatedly to reach the company but got no responses to numerous emails and phone calls.

Residents...

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Our thoughts on this story:

You have to love an article that starts with “how can the owners sleep at night?” That’s probably true – they can’t sleep because they can’t decide whether to redevelop this property into an apartment complex or a big box retail center. When will the media realize that if you publicly shame owners for raising rents and enacting rules then they will take the easy road and simply tear these old things down and build higher uses for the land? Do they still teach economics at colleges that offer journalism?

The Press Democrat: Not all Santa Rosa mobile home residents are benefiting from new rent control law

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Dec. 6 was a big day for Santa Rosa mobile homeowners who’d spent months or even years advocating for tighter limits on rent increases in their parks.

After almost two decades, the City Council voted to update and restrict how much mobile home park owners can raise rent each year on the land under residents’ homes.

Previously, Santa Rosa’s mobile home rent control, which is governed by different laws than other housing, was tied to 100% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the measure of prices for goods and services paid by consumers with a 6% cap. For 2023, that would have been 5.7%.

After negotiations between residents and owners...

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Our thoughts on this story:

It’s pretty sad when the best part of the article is in the comments section, such as this truthful obersvation "it should be illegal for the government to tell property owners how much rent they can charge tenants. They won't charge more than the market will support because they don't want to have vacancies, so there is always a balance between supply and demand. Anytime the government artificially tips the scale we go into the land of unintended consequences.” So let’s get this story right. This idiotic town in California has decided that the park owner can only raise rents by 70% of CPI with a cap of 4%. Just wait for the “Land For Sale” sign to go up and the park to be become an apartment complex or Home Depot store. Where do you find idiots like this?

News Center Maine: Professor at UMaine to research climate resilience of manufactured homes

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ORONO, Maine — For 50 years, researchers at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute have had their finger on the pulse of Maine's changing environment, and what that might mean for its residents. 

To learn more about if manufactured homes, also known as mobile homes, will hold up in Maine's future climate, UMaine Research Assistant Professor Sean Birkel will soon team up with collaborators from the University of Vermont and University of New Hampshire for a one-year study on the climate resilience of manufactured homes. 

The study is made possible thanks to a $79,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

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Our thoughts on this story:

The NOAA spent $80,000 on a grand to see if Maine mobile homes can survive climate change. I could have done the same work for $8. The answer is: yes.

NPR: At a Mass. mobile home park, residents are evicted for a new housing development

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Residents of mobile home parks are losing their places to live as new investors buy up park land for redevelopment. Residents typically own their homes, but not the land they sit on.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST: Mobile homes have long been an affordable housing option, but big investment firms have been buying up the land they sit on, causing homeowners to worry about whether they'll be able to stay. From member station WBUR in Boston, Simon Rios reports on how corporate ownership is upending the lives of people in one park.

SIMON RIOS, BYLINE: Outside John Piazza's trailer, the 84-year-old former harbor captain and amateur historian is sorting...

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Our thoughts on this story:

This is the argument that woke journalists can’t handle because it makes too much sense: if mobile home park lot rents don’t go up significantly then they will be torn down to make way for more profitable uses. How much more would the lot rent have had to be to keep this park from being redeveloped? I bet the residents would be happy to pay it now – but it’s too late.

Yahoo: Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them

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The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.

In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.

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  • You could be the landlord of Walmart, Whole Foods and Kroger (and collect fat grocery store-anchored income on a quarterly basis)

  • What do Ashton Kutcher and a...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Another take on Lee’s Trailer Park, discussed above. And once again it makes the critical point that either rents go up or the wrecking ball comes in.

Post Bulletin: Agreement in works with Bob's Trailer Park tenants as they continue without running water

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ROCHESTER — A potential agreement with four residents at Bob’s Trailer Park is in the works more than a month after they lost running water in their trailers.

“Two weeks should be sufficient time to iron out a few details,” Rochester attorney Travis Ohly told Olmsted County District Court referee Erin Felten during an online hearing Tuesday.

Ohly, who represents the property owner, Pennsylvania-based TSJ Parks LLC, said work has started in an agreement, but final terms couldn’t be reached Tuesday.

Court staff said negotiations were the cause of an approximately one-hour delay for Tuesday’s hearing, which was attended by TSJ Parks member...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Boy, is this headline misleading. The park is being closed for redevelopment, and there are only five trailers still remaining because of bureaucratic blocks on removing them and homeless people have taken over the empty trailers during this bureaucratic delay. This is a story of low rents = redevelopment, and not some rogue park owner who turned the water off.

Fast Company: ‘They never told us when we bought this place’: How mobile home communities are dealing with flood risk

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Charlotte Bishop was standing at her kitchen window in January 2019 when she saw water streaming into her yard. A block of ice had clogged the brook that snakes around the mobile home park where she and her husband Rollin live in Brattleboro, Vermont. Bishop grabbed her keys and rushed outside to move their cars to higher ground. Within minutes, she was wading through knee-high water. 

Bishop lives in Tri-Park Cooperative, Vermont’s largest and oldest resident-owned mobile home community. The co-op represents a crucial source of affordable housing for about 1,000 residents, but many of its lots are vulnerable to flooding. Bishop said her...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Non-profits now want to fund ventures to elevate mobile homes in flood zones and even relocate these homes. Who is paying for all this stuff? It looks like non-profits are America’s fastest growing new industry. There’s probably even a non-profit to fund starting non-profits.

Iowa City Press Citizen: Guest column: Mobile home park owners making housing unaffordable

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If you have a favorite cashier at the store, or a favorite nurse’s aide at the nursing home who takes care of your mother, or you belong to a veterans association, you might know someone who lives in a mobile home park in Iowa. If you do, they, like me, are either already in trouble, or headed that way. Here’s why.

Mobile home parks are the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S. The residents own their homes, but not the land their homes are on. So, they must pay lot rent every month to the park owners. Therein lies the problem.

Several years ago, out-of-state investment firms started buying up MHPs in Iowa and...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Another story of how larger owners buy up failing properties, inject capital into them to bring them back to life, save them from the wrecking ball, and are now guilty of ruining the world by giving people a better place to live at a still highly affordable price. Maybe this writer should contact the folks at Lee’s Trailer Park and get their take on that.

WBUR: A tale of two mobile home parks

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Large investors have been buying up mobile home communities at a rapid pace over the past few years, including here in Massachusetts. WBUR reporter Simon Rios dives into his reporting on two local mobile home communities that were faced with corporate buyouts, and the two very different outcomes they saw.

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Our thoughts on this story:

The same boring story of how great the resident-owned community concept is without including the fact that the park in which the residents bought the park they paid $80,000 per space and are putting no capital back into it vs. the park where the corporate owner paid about $80,000 per space (after the residents refused to buy it) and then poured a ton of money back into the property to fix it up and raised the rents accordingly. At the end of the movie, the residents will be paying the same lot rent in both parks (because park #1 will still need all this work done eventually and the rent will have to go up to pay for it) only the quality of life in park #1 will probably be lower as they will have poor management and zero fiscal governance.

The Facts: Residents express concerns regarding manufactured home community

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ANGLETON — A new manufactured home community will be developed in the city adjacent to the intersection of East Phillips Road and Gifford Road.

All of the homes in Angleton Park Place will require a concrete foundation.

“They’re going to have axles taken out from underneath them and they’re all going to have concrete slabs poured underneath the modular homes,” owner and developer Mike Morgan said.

Concerned citizens attended the Dec. 21 Board of Adjustment meeting to express their perspectives on the development.

The meeting was actually being held to discuss a possible variance for the drainage and utilities of Angleton Park...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Angleton, Texas has a median home price of nearly $200,000. The developer is going to be sticking mobile homes that value at around $70,000 each on to those new lots. Can you possibly understand why the city residents are up in arms about this zoning catastrophe? I imagine the litigation will be flying soon, as every home owner near this planned development is about to see a 50% decrease in their home value. Again, bureaucrats at work who would never allow this to happen in their neighborhood but could care less as long as it’s not next to their property.

Weather Underground: Deaths In The South Amplify Extreme Danger Of Manufactured Homes During Severe Weather

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This week’s storms in the South that killed at least three people and injured nearly 25 more highlight the dangers of being inside a mobile home or manufactured home during severe weather. Most of the homes destroyed in the storm were manufactured. And at least one of the deaths occurred in a manufactured home.

In fact, of the 104 tornado fatalities in 2021, 23 were in manufactured homes, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center. In 2020, 39 of the 76 tornado deaths that year were in manufactured homes. Through Nov. 30 of this year, more than half of tornado deaths — 13 out of 22 — happened in manufactured homes. That's a lot,...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Apparently you have a 15% better chance of being killed in a mobile home than a stick-built home if a tornado hits. You also have a 15% higher chance of dying from boredom if you read this article.

KTVQ: Legislators propose bills to help Billings mobile home residents

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Residents at the Meadowlark mobile home park in Billings continue to have dirty water, a boil order is in effect, they've had frozen and broken pipes, and the water has been shut down.

And now in the Montana Legislature, lawmakers have proposed bills they hope could help in the long run.

Last month's historic cold snap in Montana brought more problems to this Billings mobile home park.

About 20 pipes broke at the end of the year.

"Biggest thing is just the water shut offs, and, you know, not having water and it being turned off all night. Has caused a lot of stress out here for a lot of people," said Gary Deveraux, a Meadowlark resident.

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Our thoughts on this story:

Only a state bureaucrat would think that they are helping mobile home park residents by making a new law that stops park owners from “requiring a tenant to make unnecessary upgrades” to their homes. Essentially they’re dooming the 98% of park residents who take care of their property so that the 2% with five non-running cars piled in the yard, their home painted three colors and aluminum foil for curtains won’t have to bother cleaning up their act. Then you add on the new law that requires tenants to have first option to buy the park – something that they virtually never exercise and that slows down the sales process by months – and you have the kind of genius thinking that has made America the mess that it has become. Let me make it more clear for these legislators of Montana. If you pass these two bills you are going to simply have park owners tear more parks down and put in things that have less ridiculous restrictions – and nobody would blame them.