Regarding limiting a landlord’s ability to set rents using a free-market system, this Republican offers the reality check that needs to be said:

“It’s just simply not workable, because who is  going to invest in the state of Connecticut, to build more housing or make housing available when there is going to be a limit to the amount of money they’re going to make?,” said Housing Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe.

Fortunately, the bill failed because others agreed that it was a really, really stupid idea.

At least the Republicans in Delaware got it right: “House Republicans objected to the proposal, arguing that the state shouldn't be setting mandates on manufactured home community owners that could push them out of business, further reducing Delaware’s affordable housing stock." However the rent control bill passed since Delaware is majority democratic in political construction. So goodbye Delaware mobile home parks – as the first five articles this week illustrate, without higher lot rents parks get torn down for more profitable uses. A 5% cap on increases – which is less than the current rate of inflation – is like signing a death warrant for Delaware affordable housing.

There are two lessons learned from this article:

1. The residents should have paid their rent, not complained about increases, followed the rules, and Trails End might still be an ongoing mobile home park. Instead, the residents refused to pay or follow the rules, fought the owners every step of the way, and the fate of the park was sealed. The new owner made $2.4 million selling the land, but they might have hung in there and simply raised the rents if the residents had accepted the fact that the property owner held all the cards.
2. Once again, the words “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” proved to be the scariest phrase in the English language. Just ask the residents of Trails End.

And here’s something really rare: another story of a park being torn down to make way for new development. Yet the residents are trying to intervene claiming that the $650 per month they are currently paying is profit enough for the owner. Unfortunately, that’s not how the free market works. The owner of the mobile home park will weigh the numbers on owning the park vs. selling the land. If the residents wanted to improve their odds, they should go to the property owner right now and say “how much would we have to pay in lot rent to keep this as a park” and maybe they would have a shot at negotiating a solution. Having some woke journalist try to publicly shame the property owner only tilts the scales in favor of redevelopment.

And here’s another story of a park being torn down for redevelopment. One of the residents in the article admonishes “we don’t have a place to go” – which means they can’t find anything as affordable. The moral is that residents should embrace higher rents because without them they are homeless. Would an extra $150 per month in lot rent have saved the day? We’ll never know. Nobody ever wants to accept this reality until the eviction notices go out.

Yet another article about a mobile home park being torn down to be redeveloped into a new use. This time it’s going to be 19 stick-built dwellings. Once again, you have to ask yourself what the lot rent would have had to be raised to in order for this property to remain a mobile home park. Pretty tragic if it was only $200 more per month. Another reminder that without higher lot rents all parks end up being built into a more profitable use: you can’t mix the narratives of low rents and status quo usage.

What a crazy country we live in. A developer pays a fortune for an old mobile home park to tear down and build a new expensive project and now they are not allowed to dig on it because native American items were found on the site. So the developer now appears to own Florida’s most expensive grassy field. I guess the moral is that there are few things riskier than building from scratch – much safer to simply buy existing properties and fix them up. 

So I’m reading this article about putting 300 new homes on 41 acres of leased land (basically mobile home park density) and the writer is raving about how not owning the land makes the homes more affordable (just like a mobile home park) and then it hits me that when the city of Moab does the exact same thing a mobile home park owner does it suddenly is sheer genius and not “evil” any longer. Pretty hypocritical, right?

It’s only a matter of time before more cities revolt against the requirements that keep tiny homes out of mobile home parks. It’s a good thing for everyone involved – kind of like when they allowed Uber to replace taxi cabs.

So you’re thinking it’s another article about a mobile home park being torn down to make way for apartments, right? Well, you’re wrong … it’s a shopping center this time.

The State of New York funded a study on mobile home parks (probably because some bureaucrat’s unemployed literature major kid needed a summer job) and this was the only interesting thing they found:

The report showed that the “number of registered parks has declined from 1,800 to 1,200”

That’s a really, really big drop (30%).

Do you think it might be time to end rent control yet? Because the wrecking ball and apartment construction crews are working overtime to get those rent-controlled mobile home parks made into a better use since lot rents can’t go up.

Us Midwesterners read things like this – a $430,000 mobile home with a lot rent of $1,800 per month – and wonder why anyone who would buy this trailer would not simply move to a place like Kansas in which you can buy a brick home on a golf course for less money and zero lot rent. Is living in California really that much fun?

When you can convert a 22-acre park with 247 lots into 3,990 apartment units, 250,000 sq. ft. of retail and office space and a 312-room luxury hotel all you can say is “wow”. They’re planning 50-story buildings on this property. And it’s interesting that the residents sued the property owner over “evil” lot rent increases not that many years ago. I guess the folks living in the park didn’t have much of a clue regarding the other options available for the land.

It’s rare when a park owner tells it like it is, but this is a classic quote from this story:

"It might not be what some of these tenants want, but I would encourage anyone to take a drive through the property as it sits currently and see the deplorable conditions some of these mobile homes and property are in. I'm sure you have seen in the local news/paper how many tenants here are behind on taxes, but over 80% are also behind on multiple months of rent. This makes the business and property unsustainable going forward as it currently sits."

What are they going to put on this site once the mobile homes are all gone? You’re right … APARTMENTS.

I’m sorry but when the park owner has removed a bunch of abandoned, blighted trailers, rebuilt the roads, water and sewer infrastructure and generally cleaned up the aesthetics, how can you tell me that they have done a poor job? You can’t. The whopping two residents quoted in this article are clearly only complaining because the new owners raised the rent $50. I’m sure the other 99% of the park population (who they didn’t bother to talk to) are delighted to pay $50 more to have all that work done. If the media and a couple manipulative residents keep this false narrative up, they better get ready to find a new place to live because nobody would blame the owner for re-zoning the land for apartments and tearing the place down. 

Yet another article about a mobile home park that is being torn down in the near future to make way for an apartment complex. Are you shocked? With apartments at an average rent of $2,000 per month and mobile home park lot rents at an average rent of $300 per month it’s not rocket science as to why this is the most common article theme you’ll find in the news.

This is a very one-sided story, as the journalist clearly favors the resident over the landlord (big shock). Basically, it’s a story about the Kim family that started a renovation to their mobile home and were still putting around on it four months later, at which point the park owner demanded that they clean up the debris and get the job done. I doubt anyone would look favorably on their neighbor turning their home and yard into a construction site for four months – so how about the 8 months after that in which they STILL had not completed work or removed the debris. Clearly, the park owner could not let this situation continue and enlisted court help to correct the situation (which was granted).

Mobile home park owners try to be tolerant of residents making repairs and upgrades to their homes, but they also have to respect the quality of life of the general community, and this resident’s inability to complete their work in a timely manner can only be blamed on the resident. 

“The report states the park “operates at a substantial deficit, has ongoing deferred maintenance, and presents increasing administrative and financial burdens on the city… The mobile home park’s expenses have exceeded revenues by a total of $3.6 million during the past four years. Without more revenue, the city projects the park’s reserve funds will be depleted within the next five years.”

That $3.6 million loss is simply the revenue less expenses, not including any debt payment on the property.

This is a park owned by the City of Novato itself. Someone offered the city $30 million for this deferred maintenance mess (which any idiot would take) and yet the city is holding out because of concerns that the new owner might raise the rent.

So if the park revenue does not even cover the expenses – and raising the rent is “evil” – then how will this park even exist 5 years from now? Clearly it won’t. In this case, it’s probably just the city finding an easy way out of having a mobile home park in their boundary, but it’s a further demonstration that all mobile home park lot rents need to go up – way up – for old parks to stay in business. 

Let’s do the math. 58 lots x $745 per month lot rent = $518,520 total annual revenue as a mobile home park vs. 400 x $2,000 per month rent = $9,600,000 total annual revenue as an apartment complex. How high would the lot rent have had to be to make the mobile home park option attractive enough not to file an application to demolish it? If you calculate the cost of building the 8-story building for the apartments, maybe $1,500 lot rent per month would have worked. But, of course, the park owner would have been publicly criticized for a rent increase that big so they never even bothered to consider it. So instead of paying $1,500 per month for their existing dwelling, the residents will end up paying $2,000 per month for an apartment smaller than their mobile home. 

Ouch. $160,000 for a one-bedroom mobile home? I think maybe somebody at the non-profit in charge of this project should have maybe gone to the Louisville home show or talked to just about any park owner because … you got screwed.

Put your checkbook away and save the $25 million, Joe Biden. We’ve already studied how to make old mobile homes more energy efficient using a thermal gun and some common sense (kind of like the scene in Ford vs. Ferrari where the old-time car driver fixes the aerodynamics of the GT40 using a ball of yarn and scotch tape). Here’s what you do to improve the energy efficiency of an old mobile home: 1) install new weatherstripping on both front and back doors 2) new caulk around all windows 3) use thermal switch plate covers on all exterior walls and 4) put plastic sheeting or thermal drapes over all windows. Case closed and now you can donate that $25 million to a more important study on how to properly winterize a tortoise or improve the quality of life for crickets.

The future of new housing in America has many attributes found in this article – which is all about thinking outside the box. However, I have to believe you can build small houses for less than $350,000. I know they do it with 3-D printing in Europe and I wonder why we’re still using old-fashioned carpentry in an article on the housing of the future.

Let me get this straight – the park residents lost water for three hours and they therefore feel entitled to $5,000 damages per household? I have lost water at my house probably ten times in 20 years due to main water line breaks on the city’s equipment. I never – NOT EVER – would have dreamed to make such an asinine request. This defies all logic and is a testament to what a completely screwed up country we have become.  Fortunately the judge saw through this nonsense and tossed the case.

Also note that the journalist titled this piece “dismisses the mobile home park appeal” which is not true and the title should have been “dismisses the mobile home park RESIDENTS’ appeal”. Gee, I wonder what side the writer was on?

Hmmm … I think I saw that same concept two stories ago. If the residents don’t want to pay a rent high enough to support keeping the mobile home park a mobile home park, then I can already hear the “land for sale” sign being nailed up on the frontage and the apartment developers starting to make offers. IS EVERYONE IN AMERICA TOO STUPID TO SEE THAT ARTIFICIALLY KEEPING RENTS LOW SIMPLY LEADS TO PARKS BEING TORN DOWN? Apparently so.

The good news is that very, very few mobile home parks in the U.S. have cities that read and bill the water meters. Normally, the city sends one master bill to the park owner and then they read their own submeters and bill it back. But before these owners start thinking about installing meters, they might want to change to a RUBS or CAMS system and get out of the metering business altogether. Of course, that’s often the reason the city put the meters in to begin with, because most cities hate RUBS and CAMS (where you send residents either the same bill per lot or a gradated bill based on number of constants). But that’s where this is going for those owners. And the water companies are to blame.