Priced out of traditional homes during an affordability crisis, many in Wisconsin have found another way to pursue an ownership dream.

Experts estimate that more than 100,000 Wisconsin residents live in manufactured homes, the more accurate name for what many call mobile homes or trailers — structures that make up the country’s largest portion of unsubsidized low-income housing. Many live in parks where they own their homes but rent the land beneath them. 

But Wisconsin’s government is failing to enforce basic protections for residents at a time when private equity firms are buying up parks to maximize profits, a Wisconsin Watch/WPR...

The Riverside Housing and Homeless Committee discussed additional amendments to the city's Mobile Home Parks Rent Stabilization Ordinance Monday, just six days after the City Council approved capping annual rent increases at 2.8% beginning in 2026.

Despite the council's October 16 action that exceeded resident requests by setting a cap lower than the 3% being sought, the committee heard proposals for further changes including transparency requirements and restrictions on family transfer rent increases.

The committee took no action on the proposed amendments after contentious debate about whether additional changes were necessary given the...

CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – More than 14 acres off Trenton Road is proposed for rezoning in an effort to transition an old, rundown trailer park into a new mixed-use development.

The rezone from R-1 Single-Family Residential District to R-4 and C-5 north of Fairview Lane has passed first reading and will be revisited by the Clarksville City Council this week and next.

Clarksville lawyer Larry Rocconi expanded on the applicant’s plans at last month’s City Council regular session meeting. “Everybody knows Trenton Road, and I’m sure everybody has looked to the right (going north). There’s a trailer park with trailers in various...

MIAMI — Tuesday was deadline day for the remaining residents at the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater.

They had until noon to leave the property, which is being redeveloped.

Two separate Miami-Dade judges ruled against tenants trying to fight their evictions in separate hearings on Tuesday.

The judges each ordered that the stays on the plaintiffs’ evictions be lifted.

In Tuesday morning’s case, a woman claimed she was denied her due process rights.

“There’s a level of chaos of what’s going on here,” her attorney, David Winker, said. “Part of this is us trying to put order to this. These people never expected this to happen. People...

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Calif. - Residents at two City of Bell-owned mobile home parks are afraid. Since 2020, they’ve been hearing that the Bell Mobile Home Park and Florence Village are being put up for sale. Now, city officials are telling them that appraisals will be done on their homes as the city prepares a relocation impact report to assess possible relocation costs for residents in more than 200 mobile homes.

Guillermo Gonzalez has lived here for more than 20 years and can’t imagine where he could afford to move on his retiree income. Despite assurances from city officials that they are going to help the residents in every way they...

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - The deadline to move out has now passed, but some residents are still living in a Toledo mobile home park “unfit for human habitation” that is set to be demolished.

Residents living in the Riverside Mobile Home Park in South Toledo, off the Anthony Wayne Trail, were given notice in May that they needed to find a new place to live.

City leaders said years of owner neglect left the park dangerous and unsanitary. With park owners still nowhere to be found to clean up the property, the mobile home park was set to be demolished.

The original deadline for residents to move was June 23, but that was extended to Sept. 22.

As...

The West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition has been making the tour of local governments who contributed toward the Aspen Basalt and Mountain Valley Mobile Home Parks purchase to present them with details surrounding the communities’ deed restriction and their financial contribution. 

April Long, executive director of WMRHC, made a recent appearance in front of the Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners on Thursday to fill them in and let the commissioners know what exactly their $3.25 million contribution was buying. 

“The deed restriction is an affordable housing restrictive covenant,” Long explained. “It runs with the property...

Many of the more than 100 residents of the Flying Saucer RV park in Sheridan have lived there for years, turning the spots they rent for their recreational vehicles and manufactured housing into year-round homes with yards, outdoor decks and small gardens.

But now the land is under contract to a development company that intends to build an apartment complex on the site. And unlike mobile home park residents, who enjoy certain protections under state law, people in RV parks don’t have the right to make an offer to buy the land.

That leaves people like Steve Ohlfest and his wife, who’ve lived at Flying Saucer for 20 years, wondering where...

MANCHESTER -- John MacIver, 73, and many of his neighbors are worried they will not be able to keep up with rising rents in their manufactured home community.

In August, landlord MHC Pine Ridge at Crestwood II LLC sued New Jersey Attorney Matthew Platkin and Manchester Township over a new state law that caps annual rental increases in manufactured home communities like this one.

For MacIver and many of his neighbors in this age-restricted community in the Whiting section of Manchester, rising rents are quickly outpacing their retirement incomes.

"We’re happy about the (rental) cap… Most people move into these places because they’re on a...

During Monday's Fortuna City Council meeting the Save Our Seniors movement got one step closer to their goal of a stabilized rent ordinance for mobile home parks in Fortuna. 

In a vote of 3-1 council members voted to draft a temporary ordinance banning rent increases in mobile home parks in order to give city staff more time to develop a permanent ordinance. 

Today I spoke with Save our Seniors advisor Hillary Mosher to find out more.

“I felt really positive when that meeting was over to begin with, It seemed as if the council was discussing among themselves that they wanted to do an MOU, a memo of understanding so they could avoid any...

Rent prices for lots in manufactured or mobile home parks are on the rise, according to census data. Some home owners say the increases are pricing them out of the homes they own.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Some mobile and manufactured homeowners say higher lot rents are pricing them out of the homes they own. That's a particular problem in Florida, with one of the largest manufactured housing markets in the country. From member station WUSF in Tampa, Gabriella Paul reports.

GABRIELLA PAUL, BYLINE: A lot of people buy manufactured homes for the same reasons - it's a way to live affordably with neighbors your age and a park that maintains public...

The Massachusetts attorney general is suing the owner of a manufactured housing community in Taunton for “unfair and retaliatory rent increases.”

Willow Terrace Mobile Home Park, at 1 Willow Terrace, is a 74-unit all-ages community owned by BoaVida Communities, which owns 250 manufactured housing sites across the country, according to a Sept. 9 statement from the Attorney General’s Office about the lawsuit.

“As our residents living in manufactured housing communities continue to grapple with rising costs, the last thing they need is community owners violating their rights and our state laws by raising rents as a form of retaliation,”...

PASCO COUNTY, Fla., – Residents of a 55+ manufactured home community are taking the property owner to court after a significant lot rent increase. According to the lawsuit, some residents’ lot rent went up 126% in just one year.

Gail Berghold, 79, moved to The Highlands at Scotland Yards in Dade City in 2017. Berghold told News 6 she was paying more than $600 a month in lot rent, but in January, her lot rent jumped to $1,300.

“I’m lucky if I have enough money for groceries from one paycheck to the other,” said Berghold.

News 6 has been covering the lot rent increases at manufactured home communities across Florida. In many of these...

SANFORD, Maine — The city is pumping the brakes on rent increases for residents at local mobile home parks for 90 days.

In a vote that sparked applause by those in attendance, the Sanford City Council enacted the temporary moratorium on rate hikes by a vote of 6-1 on Sept. 16. City Councilor Jonathan Martell was the lone dissenter.

The temporary nature of the moratorium is justified by two pieces of recently passed legislation, LD 1723 and LD 1765, at the state level, City Manager Steven Buck said. Combined, both pieces of legislation create affordability and stability for those who rent homes and live in manufactured housing communities...

NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. —

As home prices on the Gulf Coast continue to rise, Florida families are increasingly turning to manufactured homes as a more affordable housing option.

Larina Kramer, who moved into a manufactured home a year ago, said, "The other homes we looked at were out of league." She explained that her home cost $150,000, which she described as "nothing."

Communities like Lake Arrowhead along U.S. Route 41 in North Fort Myers are popular among retirees, but they are also attracting younger families. Arlene Fenn said, "I find that our park is turning into younger people. People that are still working." The community is for...

Busloads of Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park residents in white T-shirts packed a rare six-judge hearing on Aug. 28, as Miami-Dade County courts pressed pause on immediate evictions, allowing more than 200 Sweetwater, Florida, families to stay in their homes—for now. 

Judges questioned two key points in the long saga of the decades-old mobile home park that is being redeveloped for “affordable” housing: whether the park’s owner properly served change-of-use notices and whether the residents’ homeowners’ association (HOA) is valid.

The case centered on a motion for summary judgment filed by park owner Consolidated Real Estate Investments...

FLINT TWP., MI -- The township has rezoned property where a condemned mobile home park was located, potentially opening up the land for future construction of single-family homes.

The township Board of Trustees completed a second reading of the zoning change this week, and officials said the new designation will take effect after publication of a legal notice about the former Myrtle Grove Mobile Home Park off West Dayton Street.

Residents of the Willow Bend and Willow Hill mobile home parks in Oak Creek are scrambling this week, organizing efforts to attempt to purchase the two parks after being notified the current owner has plans to sell.

“We are doing a lot of door knocking,” said Noreen Moore, who owns a mobile home in the Willow Bend neighborhood. “I think knocking on the door, and talking to someone individually might be more successful because explaining what a (resident-owned community) does — and doesn’t do — is the big thing.”

Moore is part of a group of owners that includes her Oak Creek neighbors Frinda Galey, Shawna Warbington and Joe Buettgen. The...

Bruce Gordon, 81, and fellow residents at Marsh Brook Estates are hoping the city will step in to help prevent large rent increases. Sanford city leaders are expected to vote next week on a temporary moratorium on rent increases in manufactured and mobile home parks.

SANFORD — Bruce Gordon moved into Marsh Brook Estates hoping it would be somewhere he could enjoy retirement. And while the 81-year-old did retire briefly in 2022, he’s now a school bus driver.

Devo Brown began renting land at Camarillo Mobile Estates, a mobile home park for residents 55 and older, about five years ago after he lost his Malibu home in the Woolsey fire.

Although his rent has increased 20% during his time at the park, he considers himself one of the lucky homeowners. Since 2020, he said, rents for residents newly moved in have risen from $1,250 to $2,050 per month—a nearly 65% increase.

This year, the rent increases have already prompted at least three of Brown’s neighbors to move out. Two of them abandoned their homes because they could not find any buyers who were willing to pay the rent and one of the two now...

Residents of Friendly Village Mobile Home Park in Gorham say they're abandoning their efforts to purchase their community for now, after their cooperative submitted three different offers and all were rejected.

The park's residents were the face of a legislative effort in Augusta this year to change Maine law and tighten protections for mobile home residents around the state.

Earlier this year, Friendly Village residents received notice that the park was being sold to Wyoming-based investor Crown Communities, LLC, as part of a $87.5 million portfolio sale that included seven other parks in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York.

In May,...

Like most high desert towns, Madras, Oregon, is no stranger to extreme temperatures.

Located about 2,250 feet above sea level in a dry valley surrounded by central Oregon’s Cascade Range, summers in Madras can reach triple-digits, and winters below freezing.

Homes outfitted for both hot and cold days are necessary in this rural community – but never guaranteed. That’s because within Madras city limits, there are eight mobile home parks with 276 housing spaces total, according to Oregon’s manufactured dwelling park directory.

Many of these manufactured homes are outdated and lack the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC)...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — Pinellas County declared a majority of a mobile home community significantly damaged and informed residents that they need to raise them or tear them down.

This vulnerable community is in fear of losing their homes.

The Gateway Mobile Home Park is off Gandy Boulevard and 4th Street North, in St. Petersburg.

It’s a 55-and-up community. Many live on a fixed income and the stress is affecting their health. Now, Pinellas County said its focus is on compliance.

After a 40-year career at Cornell University, Bonnie Sisco has been living out the retirement she had dreamed of at the Gateway for the past 15 years.

“I...