Mobile Home Park News Briefing

I hate to rain on another fantasy parade, but the homes in those photos are from the 1970s and 1980s. They are clearly in extremely poor condition. They will never survive the move from that property. On top of that, none of these residents will ever be able to afford private land or the $10,000 needed to put in a well and septic. This is just a bunch of hopeless nonsense. The residents had a great run at the world’s cheapest housing under an all too lenient mom and pop owner, but the new investor appears poised to take this property to the next level – benefitting the remaining residents who have pride of ownership – and these homes need to be demolished, not moved. This is not a story of an evil park owner but of residents who did not maintain their homes, to the detriment of their neighbors, and their actions finally caught up with them. It’s called personal accountability.

But some residents and District 2 Caddo Commissioner Greg Young say they would like to see more ownership in the area.

No, that’s not the real reason. It’s the politically correct reason, but not the truth. The reason that people don’t want to have a mobile home park built next to them is that it substantially reduces their property values. Just go to Zillow and look at a house next to a mobile home park and one three blocks away. The one by the park is about 30% less in value. Until you can fix that simple reality there won’t be any new mobile home parks built.

I’m confused by who the target customer is for these things. 400 sq. ft. is way too small for a family with kids. So it must be focused on young single people or seniors. But these developments are located out in the middle of nowhere so there’s no jobs and, therefore, I don’t know how the young person can pay the rent (unless they work remotely, which is a very small market). That only leaves senior households, and those 400 sq. ft. homes are too small – and with awkward floor plans – that render them difficult to be truly functional.

Until you can solve this riddle, tiny homes have no future. But they do make for entertaining TV shows on the HGTV channel.

Littleton City Manager Jim Becklenberg said at a city council study session this week that the city does not currently have housing purchase subsidies funding to grant the residents’ original $2.6 million request to help them buy the land. Instead, the council directed staff to contribute $225,000 — some of which will be refunded — to go toward earnest money and pre-purchase expenses.

Clearly, this deal is not going to happen. It was a nice gesture by the city to save face, but to pull this off the residents will need a gift of around $1 million and a non-profit to personally guarantee the mortgage.

Of course, it’s probably better this deal dies quickly as many of these “blindfolded half-court shots” rack up monstrous diligence costs before finding out that they can’t come up with the money.

Mobile home park duplexes are the bastion of “man camps” and parks that are filled with temporary, transient workers who are there to do a job and go home. To pretend that anybody else would live in these dreadfully small, depressing things is completely asinine.

“After I pay for water, electricity, cable, groceries, and my medication I am left with nine dollars at the end of the month,” one resident on fixed income, who requested to remain anonymous, told the Lynnwood Times.

I know that Washington state is blue as can be. I know that it’s the homeland of the woke “free rent movement”. But if you add up the items in the quote above, it means that the resident has a total income of around $1,000 per month. Exactly how would this person be able to live anywhere in the U.S. on that amount? They clearly need to get into the U.S. Section 8 program. But, of course, they can’t because there is a 10-year wait list or something like that. This is not the story of evil park rents but instead the story of a government subsidy system that is broken.

99.9% of park residents like higher lot rents because they bring with them better property condition and professional management. But instead, Washington is seriously contemplating policies that revolve around an incredibly small minority of tenants but will literally destroy the Washington housing market, as rent control has in all other states dumb enough to institute them.

Read these new rules from the Massachusetts Attorney General regarding mobile home parks:

• Clarifies that community owners may not deny tenancy applications based on a single factor, such as credit score or income level, when there is other reasonable evidence of a prospective tenant’s ability to pay rent
• Informs community owners that they must charge new residents entering their community the same rent as residents already living in the community so long as the new residents have similar lot sizes and receive the same services as those already living in the community
• Clarifies the process that community owners must follow to discontinue the use of a manufactured housing community

So now tell me who would want to own a mobile home park in that state?

Ironic that the city that brought you the Boston Tea Party – the origins of the “freedom” movement – would be the place in which woke bureaucrats heap on new regulations that make property ownership completely unappealing.

This is not going to work. Just more subsidies for the taxpayers and donors to pay. Can’t anyone come up with an idea that is not reliant on hand-outs?

And another one bites the dust … This time you have a city that is tearing down the “trailer park” to build a “recreational park”. Well, at least it’s still in the “park” family.

I always love the fact that when a private company tries to tear down a park the media goes crazy and demands that the city fathers stop them but when a city does the exact same thing the media thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Perhaps they can bottle up America’s sheer hypocrisy and use that as an alternative energy solution. It’s the most plentiful product America produces at the moment.

The answer is “no”. Looking at modular homes is like looking at car styles from the 80s – certainly no longer cutting edge. Personally, I would bet that 3-D printed homes are the future of affordable housing when you’re talking about putting attractive small homes on small lots at lower price points in stick-built neighborhoods. Modular homes look lousy and cost way too much for what you get, which is a glorified mobile home. That’s why – even though modular homes have been around for a long time – nobody buys them. Time to move on.

“The nuisance abatement law provides a solution for problem locations that disproportionately demand law enforcement resources and reduce the quality of life for citizens of North Carolina,” said Scottie Shoaf, the Special Agent in Charge of the Nuisance Abatement Team. “It was a privilege to work with this community and restore peace to the residents living in this community.”

And another one bites the dust… This city had an original idea to get the “trailer park” out of town and that was to use a “nuisance abatement law”. I’ve never heard of that one before. The Park owner was probably OK with that decision as it clears the land for him to redevelop without much fanfare, and he can blame it all on the city.

"Kelly cited extensive repairs needed to the park's decades-old infrastructure, specifically the water system, as the reason for the evictions…"

And here we have yet another park being torn down – and it’s the same old story. The lot rents were too low to pay for needed infrastructure repair and the land was now worth more than the park.

Have I mentioned that LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT enough yet?

I know absolutely nothing about these parks – and I wouldn’t own one in California if you gave it to me – but more than likely the park has rents that are way too low and it finally caught up with the owner. When you stop paying your utilities, it’s normally the last straw. However, before all the residents jump up and down on their dream of trashing the owner, they better remember that the owner will more than likely be selling the park off as raw land for development as their next step, since the park clearly is not cash-flowing.

As always, LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT.

So let me get this straight. A private company buys an old mobile home park with the intention of tearing it down to build something new. The city fights them tooth over nail and ultimately forces them into bankruptcy so that they can now buy it and do effectively the same thing that the original developer intended. But, of course, it’s OK for the city to do this because they inject the word “affordable” into their announcement every other word or so.

Did anyone notice how odd it is that the city is buying out all the mobile homes themselves as part of the transaction? Clearly, that’s so they can get rid of them later on. Until then, in phase one, they are going to let some nutty start-up build out around 30 units of stick-built housing on the currently unused part of the tract. Of course, they don’t tell anyone that phase two will probably be to tear down the 38 mobile homes the city just mysteriously bought and put stick-builds on those, too.

Another case of the residents playing the patsy for the city’s intended closure of the mobile home park.

In a land lease community (LLC), residents own their home but lease the land it sits on, paying a regular rent to the community’s developer to occupy the site. Without the land component, homes can be 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than if they were a freehold property in the same location.

Looks like Australian journalists may have more common sense than their American counterparts, because this is an article from “down under” and they “get” the fact that people choose to live in land-lease communities because they’re cheaper and not in hopes of home appreciation. But don’t tell the assistant professor from the earlier article because she’d call this “manipulation and exploitation”. You can imagine what Crocodile Dundee would then call her…

If Congress removed the permanent chassis requirement, manufactured homes would be safer, and they would be much more acceptable in traditional neighborhoods.

Few people are aware that the reason that mobile homes sit on a “boat trailer” foundation is because Congress mandates it to be that way – dating from when they did a hostile takeover of mobile home manufacturing in the 1970s. Clearly this was a decision made at the request of the single-family home building special interest groups who did not want their prices to be undercut and thought that affixing a boat trailer to the underside of a mobile home would render it a lesser competitive form of housing. Scandalous, huh?

The city is partnering with Kirksville R-III School District and is planning to use the property to build four tiny homes.

So the city is tearing down a massive mobile home park in order to build only 4 tiny homes? I love the fact that – since a city owns the park and they are demolishing it – there is zero push back from the media on all the families being evicted. This makes me think we need to add to my earlier equation:

LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT = HAPPY CITY GOVERNMENT

Is that REALLY what rent control is all about? Wouldn’t shock me.

Look at the photos then look at the prices. What idiot would pay that much? In Missouri we’d call that “bad shopping”.

The commission is looking to apply for a $13 million piece of the $225 million pool of grant funding. The PRICE grant is part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s initiative to improve mobile homes or manufactured home parks. Its goals include bolstering the housing supply and weather-proofing and repairing structures, among other things.“Roofing, plumbing, doors, anything that we would do in a normal home rehabilitation,” said Chasta White, the commission’s housing programs specialist, adding that infrastructure repairs are likely to impact multiple units. “We’re looking to do paving, well and septic tank updates … broadband in some areas. We’re looking to do lighting, curb and gutter, painting, all kinds of infrastructure repairs.”

Needless to say, I hope that this occurs. Bureaucrats would be smart to invest in helping mobile home parks to fix aging infrastructure as it reduces the likelihood of redevelopment into another use.

Of course, it’s been a pretty regular political reality to talk about things and never do them, so we’ll see if any of this actually happens. 

A Chilliwack resident is urging city hall to consider the plight of senior owners in Fraser Village Mobile Home Park who may soon be forced to sell their manufactured homes and move. Terry Hanson said he and fellow park residents learned about redevelopment plans for the park across from Townsend Park after reps of Westbow Group held a meeting explaining their intent to build townhouses on the property.

I should start selling T-shirts that say ASK ME HOW LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT. If I sold them to displaced residents only my sales would be in the thousands of units.

Dozens of tenants at a mobile home community in the Flathead Valley just got eviction notices as the new owners change their business model. They have 180 days to vacate. Most are now facing an uncertain future with no other place to go.

Yes, this is the future of many, many mobile home parks if lot rents do not go up substantially. Property owners are not going to stick with a mobile home parking lot if there are more lucrative options. Since you can build apartments stacked two or three high on a single mobile home lot – and rent those apartments for $2,000 per month each – it is essential that lot rents increase significantly and fast.

As I’ve written about for years now, the basic message is “Low Lot Rents = Redevelopment”. It’s not rocket science – simply common sense.

The Novato City Council is moving forward with a plan to revise its rent-control ordinance governing mobile home parks. The changes under consideration would cap annual rent increases on mobile home spaces at the consumer price index (CPI) or 4%, whichever is lower.

Why not call this by its true name: “Redevelopment Insurance”. How can you explain the concept that park owners should not be able to raise their prices more than 4% if inflation is 9%? You can’t. And with the passage of this ordinance, I would imagine that there will be no mobile home parks in Novato within a few years WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE CITY LEADERS ARE HOPING FOR.

For some, the purchase of a mobile home offers a low-cost alternative to homeownership. But in many cases, mobile homes lead to exploitation, said Hannah Lebovits, an assistant professor of public affairs and planning at the University of Texas at Arlington. “That specific space in the U.S. creates a lot of opportunities for manipulation and exploitation because we don’t really see that class of people as having power,” Lebovits said. “In fact, we see them as very disempowered and disadvantaged, and that creates opportunities to further marginalize them through systems of exploitation. It’s similar almost if we think about the dollar store model, to where we have these dollar stores popping up in communities that don’t have full grocery stores,” Lebovits said. “And the theory is, well, it’s cheaper because it’s a dollar store, but actually, the per unit cost for most items at a dollar store is significantly higher than at regular grocery stores.Unlike brick-and-mortar homes, mobile homes do not accumulate value over time and create wealth for the owner. The owner is not building equity, Lebovits said. It’s the opposite. The second you purchase that home, you are diminishing the value of the home. The second you begin to live in the home, you’re diminishing the value of the home, which is, again, that economic exploitation,” she said. 

Who wouldn’t expect a woke assistant professor at UTA to declare that mobile home parks are all about “manipulation and exploitation”. Let’s break her arguments down into bite-sized pieces of idiocy to easily refute them. So here goes:

People live in mobile home parks because it’s inexpensive. Yes, mobile homes do not appreciate like single-family homes. Residents are not living in mobile home parks because they are banking on appreciation. What motivated them is that they’re paying around $500 per month for a 3/2 when the surrounding stick-built homes cost $400,000 on average. If they can afford the $400,000 – and look at housing as an investment with huge returns in the form of higher future values – then they should definitely buy that. Nobody is standing in their way. But for most Americans today, $400,000 is a little out of their budget. I guess you could say the same thing about cars. If you bought a $250,000 Ferrari, it might appreciate in value over the years. But if you bought a $25,000 KIA it would only decline in value. So if you can afford a Ferrari – and owning a car is your idea of a smart investment – then that’s what you should do. Definitely. But if your goal is affordable transportation the KIA is the right choice.

Yes, mobile home park owners hold all the cards as far as future land use. It’s their land. Because the residents don’t own the land they pay a fraction of the price of competing housing. If the resident can afford to pay $400,000, they should definitely buy a house that comes with land and that solves the problem. They could also buy an acre way out in the country and place their mobile home on that. Land ownership used to be the American dream, but inflation has made it unattainable. Buying a mobile home, without the land, is attainable. Mobile home park owners are what give residents this affordable option.

Yes, the quality of the products at Dollar Stores is mostly lower than the full-price alternative. But the difference is that everything only costs a dollar vs. $5 or $10 for the same basic commodity somewhere else. They sell the $1 dog bowl at Hermes for $500 if you prefer that. People shop at the Dollar Store because that’s what they can afford, not because they think it’s the place to go to get the highest quality goods.

SO HERE’S THE BIG CONCLUSION: IT’S NOT “MANIPULATION AND EXPLOITATION” BUT A FINANCIAL CHOICE OF THE CONSUMER AS TO HOW MUCH TO SPEND. One of the great things about America is that competition leads to a number of choices and price points, all with good and bad attributes for the consumer to decide. But it’s personal accountability once you make your decision.

I recently flew on Delta and they have three classes of seating options: 1) First-class 2) Plus and 3) Coach. First-class costs three times more than coach. Plus costs two times more than coach. Coach is the cheapest and has very little legroom. If I choose Coach then it’s a decision I make to save money, and I can’t go to the airline later complaining that they used “manipulation and exploitation” to make me buy it. That’s a foundation of the woke initiative – that everyone is a weak and must be watched over. Not buying it.

Hannah Lebovitz is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Not to be mean, but that’s a pretty lowly rated institution. Here’s what U.S. News and World Report says about it: The University of Texas at Arlington's ranking in the 2024 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, #236. Its in-state tuition and fees are $11,728;  So I guess you could kind of compare UTA to the Dollar Store of colleges, right? Do the students go there out of “manipulation and exploitation”? Apparently, based on her arguments.

This year, park owners proposed a $100 increase to her nearly $900-a-month lot lease. Park owners can raise rates if they match the Consumer Price Index. Inflation has given license to raise lease prices as much as the market will bear. “Now people have to decide well, ‘do I take that off of my food?’” she says. “’Or do I take that off of my prescriptions?’”

Why is all this “attitude” focused only on mobile home park lot rents? Under Biden we have seen 30% increases in prices in three years. Gas is double and so are groceries. Why are those increases fine but mobile home park lot rent increases (at an actually lower percentage) are abhorrent? I’m sick and tired of this false narrative.

COMMON SENSE MISTAKE: PRETENDING THAT ANY TYPE OF COST IS DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER – IT’S ALL THE SAME WHEN YOU HAVE TO BALANCE YOUR BUDGET.

“You can’t move the home, ‘mobile’ is a huge misnomer,”said Dickens. “That home is built, created, made to be placed in one spot and not moved and that becomes a real challenge for manufactured homeowners who are constantly facing economic eviction through the ever-increasing rents. ”Dickens often refers to manufactured homeowners as “prisoners in their own homes” because they do not have the ability to move and are constantly at the mercy of predatory landlords who “seem to want to nickel and dime them through various fees and charges and an ever-increasing rent.”

So let me get this straight. You can’t afford the cost of housing and the only solution is to jack your home up, re-attach the hitch, call a mover, and down the highway you go into the sunset? How about just putting it on the market and selling it like all home and condo owners do? If you move your mobile home the lot rent will all be about the same no matter where you go, and you will have wasted thousands of dollars in moving the home for no purpose. If you live in Washington you’d have to move the home several states over to find a cheaper place to live. Instead just sell the mobile home and move somewhere that you can actually afford, even if that means moving to an apartment in Kentucky.

COMMON SENSE MISTAKE: THINKING THAT MOBILE HOME PARK LOT RENTS ARE CHEAPER DOWN THE STREET BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT AND THAT MOVING A MOBILE HOME IS SMARTER THAN JUST SELLING IT.