Last winter, the residents of Whippoorwill Hill Mobile Home Park in Wiscasset struggled with continuous shutdowns of its water supply and the park’s failure to maintain its roads and ditches. This problem continues today..Meanwhile, during the past two years, Maine Real Estate Management and its anonymous owner have raised the park’s lot rents by nearly 66%, all while failing to fix the problems that are causing physical harm to all of our residents at the park.

Well, I guess we all know what comes next. Goodbye mobile home park and hello new apartment complex. And the resident who wrote this letter to the editor will get top billing for causing the park to shut down. If you read the article, the owner is trucking in water until the repairs are completed, which costs a fortune. Yet they get zero respect from the residents. There are two sides to every story, and I’m betting $50 that the park owner is in the right here. They are trying to save the park and bring it back to life, and a few loud residents are fighting them every step of the way.

I don’t know any of the facts on this story, but the optics to me, the reader, is that Douglas County succeeded in their mission to get rid of these mobile home parks:

“Justag LLC was one of the bidders rejected in July because plans for the properties included creating a mobile home park or manufactured home community with 59 sites.Creating a mobile home park on the sites again would require a zoning change, which is unlikely to gain support from Parkland town officials or the county, Liebaert said. The mobile home parks preexisted zoning regulations adopted in the 1970s, he said. The property is currently zoned for residential development and a mobile home park would require commercial zoning, he said.”

As I recall the county took over these properties claiming they were in substandard condition. Then they were going to sell them off, but the only bidder wanted to operate them as mobile home parks. So they killed that off as fast as they could.

This is the reality of city/county attitudes regarding affordable housing. They don’t really want it at all, but to say that might trigger cancel culture so they instead come up with these absurd stories of how it wasn’t really their fault.

A mobile home is a parking lot. If your car burns down you still are responsible to remove the car and pay the rent until it’s gone. It’s not rocket science. But instead, here’s what the residents are saying:

"We're very frustrated because we've been left in the streets. We've been left on the street, nothing left. If I haven't been able to find a home because I have no money, how am I supposed to pay for this?" said Martin Verduzco, a resident who lost his home due to the fire. 

What the park owner is doing is following the legal methodology to remove the burned homes themselves. Somebody’s got to do it. Obviously, the residents are not going to. The park owner ends up paying the bill, as usual.

Instead of the writer of this article pointing out that the park owner is the good guy who is actually taking it on the chin, they portray the residents – who are neglecting their legal responsibility – as the heroes. When will the U.S. fixation on lack of personal accountability ever end?

The state has been extremely clear about the steps to get people back on their feet:

State leaders Tuesday laid out the next steps for mobile homeowners like Christie -- register with 211 and FEMA, ask for a certificate of condemnation from your town, and don’t demolish your home until the FEMA award process is complete.

The problem is that – despite getting between $20,000 and $50,000 on average – the residents don’t want to wait. This kind of reminds me recently of the article in which the park residents were going to file a class action lawsuit against an owner because the power was off for three hours.

I have had my own electricity lost in a storm for a week when it was 100 degrees out. I have had my water knocked out for days when a pipe ruptured and it was too cold to dig. It’s called life. You can’t deal with life without some degree of patience and apparently Vermonters don’t have a lot of it at the moment.

I’m afraid these residents are in for a rude awakening:

“The county has a collection of four mobile home parks that are up for sale right now. If they sell, new owners or property managers could raise their rents, or try to build on those properties and remove their homes altogether. That being said, those parks are potentially eligible for help from the state or county, if they can find grants to have the county purchase the parks and keep rents low”. 

Most bureaucrats talk a big game until you ask them to write a check and then they hide under their desks. Similarly, any new buyer will surely raise the rents significantly as these parks look to be mismanaged from the photo and will require new professional leadership and capital expenditure, and that will almost certainly require higher rents. And, of course, they are also in a prime position for redevelopment.

Any way you cut it, the probable outcome is that the parks will either be torn down or the rents will go up. I see little chance of the bureaucrats rushing in to save the day as you could make the same argument that they should buy the local apartments, too, and the list goes on and on.

Nobody really appreciates mobile home parks until they are on the verge of going away – kind of like some sad country western song.

OK, do you spot the scam going on in the media right now:

“It occurred to me that 90% of the questions in this four-page survey were satisfied by my local community, Marin Valley Mobile Home Country Club (MVMCC). It is a close-knit mobile home park of over 400 residents, owned by the city of Novato since 1997, with competent oversight from an elected group of residents. Novato doesn’t provide these healthy living activities, such as yoga or book clubs, as recommended in the survey, but the residents themselves provide them through volunteer commitments.However, the city has provided security and stability by serving as a nonprofit entity-owner, with reasonable, affordable rents. A defined 40% of the lots are reserved for low-income residents.”

There are only around 300 resident-owned mobile home parks in the U.S. out of 44,000 parks. So this is all nonsense and not worthy of this much media time.

So why are there suddenly a ton or articles on how great life is when residents own their own communities? Clearly, this is a big media push that is being promoted by a number of non-profits behind the scenes that are trying to brainwash Americans (and politicians) that this is the greatest idea since sliced bread.

Smart people will spot that this is a scam and not buy it. But unfortunately, idiots will.

This is an issue for each resident to decide. If you live in a flood zone, you get flooding. It’s called accountability. How can people suddenly wake up and say “oh my gosh, I didn’t know I could be flooded?” when they’ve known that from the onset. If the State of Vermont now steps in and says “you can’t live in flood zones” then many people who have planned for periodic flooding will lose the use of their property. Is that fair?

Another article about a county government shutting down a park. Between owners wanting to redevelop for more profitable uses – and city/county/state governments wanting to shut them down to remove affordable housing units from their neighborhoods – mobile home parks may soon be listed as an endangered species.

The buyers are paying $16,250,000 ($200,000 per lot) for a rundown park. Exactly how would this not be a redevelopment deal? The reason the residents have probably not received notice is that the owner is not going to do so until after the deal has closed. How could anyone think that there will be any other outcome? 

It’s like electric cars: they’re not for everyone. I have no desire to live in a 300 sq. ft. house, nor do I know anyone who does. I think those who want to “live small” are already working on that dream. But I also think that houses under 1,000 sq. ft. don’t fall into the average American’s list of goals, and that’s why you’re not going to see a ton more interest. Mobile homes hit that 1,000 sq. ft.  threshold and that’s why they’re in endless demand. I’ve personally sold hundreds of homes and I can tell you that under 1,000 sq. ft. is a deal killer.

No, I don’t buy into this viewpoint. Although there’s no question that rents have gone up, $400,000 homes and $2,000 per month apartments are only in giant cities. Nobody ever talks about the alternative. Here’s the actual stat from Wikipedia on life outside of the city:

Rural areas in the United States, often referred to as rural America, consists of approximately 97% of the United States' land area. An estimated 60 million people, or one in five residents (17.9% of the total U.S. population), live in rural America.

So if you move out to the 97% of America that is outside major cities, you can get a nice house for $100,000 and a nice apartment for $500 per month. I know, because I live in a town of 4,500 an hour outside of the big city. These “transient” people described in the article need to give up on their “big city” obsession, move to rural areas, get stable jobs, and provide a nice home for their families. This entire “I can’t afford the real world” nonsense is the opposite of personal accountability and the truth is that there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to live in a Winnebago in a WalMart parking lot. If that’s your lifestyle then the problem is you and not the U.S. housing market.

This was an interesting article until I got to the actual pricing: $1 million for 1,866 sq. ft. The whole point of alternative construction methods is to save money – not spend $500 per sq. ft. on something that is, at best, experimental with no stats on resale value. Makes no sense to me.

Sure, these are cool. And 144 sq. ft. for $8,325 means a 1,000 sq. ft. model (which is much more livable) would only cost around $50,000. And, yes, this is the solution to the affordable housing crisis. And, no, you can’t build them virtually anywhere in the U.S. due to the Uniform Building Code. And the construction industry will never let that code be changed. So when people tell you that it’s impossible to build affordable housing they’re not telling you the truth. The truth is that the government ensures that you can’t with codes that most people don’t even know exist. Change the codes and between this type of option and 3-D printed homes you could provide $150,000 stick-built dwellings in cities across America (the average lot in the U.S. is $80,000 so you have to add that in, too, thus the $150,000 price point).

The developer is going to put 100 apartments at $1,500 a month on a parcel that held 50 mobile homes. That’s because you can make apartments two and three stories high. Mobile home parks can only exist on on level. No way the park can compete with this income differential and clearly it has to come down.

However, the moral is that residents, governmental agencies and the media need to appreciate that mobile home parks are coming down everywhere and they better do more to make owners not want to redevelop their land.

Here’s probably what a “hot mic” would have heard minutes before the meeting:

Alderman #1: “so how can we kill off this stupid trailer park concept?”

Alderman #2: “I know, let’s say we think that the people will block the roads with their cars and the ambulance can’t get in”.

Alderman #3: “Yeah, I like that one, but let’s also throw in about how we don’t have enough water pressure”.

Alderman #4: “I don’t care what you guys tell them, just hurry up with the vote because I don’t want to miss Pizza Night at the Eagles Club.”

I know nothing about the details of this park or the allegations, but it sure looks suspicious that these bureaucrats won’t simply fix the water now, but will only invest the money if the owner sells to the residents. The optics to me makes me wonder if this is really just a case of trying to coerce this owner into this ridiculous resident-owned community dream. Wait until the residents see what the new lot rent will be once they pile debt on this property. Good luck.

$105,000 for a 10’ x 30’? Seriously? That’s $300 per square foot. Maybe somebody considering this should consult Realtor.com because you can get a real house – including the land underneath – in the nicest areas of the U.S. for an average of $250 per square foot. 

I have to admit that I find it ironic when cities shut down parks and think they can rationalize it with flowery prose:

McAllen City Manager Roy Rodriguez said the city bought the property three years ago for expansion purposes. “We are expanding the campus for the McAllen Convention Center and outside festivities like MXLAN, this weekend is a perfect example of how we are expanding the facility,” Rodriguez said. “We are ready to start attempting to develop it”

I guess all park owners can learn from this and use the old Teddy Roosevelt phrase when the media calls “we shall endeavor to persevere” with property redevelopment.

This article pretty much exemplifies that the worst thing you can probably hear is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

The residents rarely have the ability to come up with the money on these ridiculous first-option rules. The odds are about as large as a meteorite hitting the title company. Just read the article itself. Here’s the proof:

“There are now 24 resident-owned communities in Washington and roughly 300 across the country, she said”

Here’s a reality check. There are around 44,000 mobile home parks in the U.S. There are around 300 resident-owned communities. That’s .0.0068% probability that they pull it off. Or conversely a 99.32% chance they can’t. Is that really worth the delay these first-option rules require? Clearly not. Then why pass such nonsense? Because it panders to the voting base and most voters are too stupid to know the actual math.

Here’s the key quote from this article:

“In the wake of Petaluma moving to tighten rent control and other protections in its mobile home parks, two park owners have now signalled they may shut down”.

The writer then goes on to point out how this will destroy hundreds of residents’ lives who can find no place even remotely as cheap to live.

OK, now who is then responsible for those folks being homeless? The group that passes the rent control. Their vote effectively signalled the death warrant for these properties. And they won’t be alone. I’m sure that other parks in Petaluma will follow their lead and redevelop into different uses.

I’ve written for nearly 20 years about the fact that rent control equals park redevelopment. It’s never going to change. Want to eliminate mobile home parks in your city/county/state? Simple solution: just pass rent control.

This quote reflects everything that’s wrong with the perception of mobile home park landlords:

[when a home burns down] residents are still required to pay rent for their mobile home spot, regardless if their house is still standing….But that’s not all.“They’re now telling us that we’re responsible for cleanup,” Castillo continued. “These families, many of whom didn’t have insurance, are now left to scramble and find apartments, find other places where they already don’t meet the income requirements. Aside from doing that, they also have to now find a way to save money, to pay the over $5,000 in cleanup fees plus the monthly rent until they are able to put in their 30 day notice to vacate.” Leaving many not knowing what’s next.“I feel like they’re just seeing us as dollar signs,” Perez said.

According to this rationale, mobile home park owners are not landlords, they are apparently government agencies – non-profits – that are responsible for much more than just providing parking spaces for mobile homes. Can you imagine applying this same logic to a parking lot at the airport in which your car burned down while you were on your trip. Do you think that would make you not responsible for your parking fee? For removal of your car? To any damage to the parking lot that the fire caused?

This is just plain stupid.

More nonsense about back-seat driving residents and media reporters trying to second guess complicated land development issues – kind of like me trying to critique brain surgery.

The moral to this story is simple: stay far, far away from California if you want to be a landlord. Who in the world wants to mess with nonsense like this?

Am I the only one or doesn’t this program sound like the old “company store” from the 19th century where miners and manufacturing workers were not paid in U.S. currency but in credits they could only use at the “company store” and had no actual monetary value? In this case, you buy a stick-built home with real cash and yet all you get is a 99-year land lease under which you can only sell your home back to this “land trust” and after 99-years – if you don’t sell – they can just take it back for free. Since the whole point of home ownership is to gain equity as home prices increase, they are effectively neutering the ability to profit from home ownership. Bad deal for the buyers, in my opinion.