GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A new property acquisition is helping a West Michigan nonprofit continue its fight against homelessness in the community.

Putting an end to homelessness is the mission of Family Promise of West Michigan.

“There’s families you see all over town and you don’t realize the need that they have, in terms of their housing insecurity,” said Lisa Valk, Chief Operating Officer at Family Promise of West Michigan. “We want every family, every child in our community to go from insecurely housed to securely housed.”

One of the nonprofit’s programs, Partners in Housing, allows Family Promise to rehab manufactured homes. They...

RIVERDALE — The former residents of Lesley’s Mobile Home Park in Riverdale are long gone, forced out so the land can be redeveloped

But many of the units they occupied, some extremely dilapidated, remain, apparently to the chagrin of some residents and city officials. The units, most too old to be reused, are to be razed and removed. It’s just not clear when that will happen, though Mayor Braden Mitchell indicates the arrival of the machinery needed to complete the cleanup work is looming.

“I just found out (Friday) that they plan on starting to bring in the heavy equipment in the next week or two,” he said in a message Saturday to the...

A big plot of land in Cary is up for sale, and the purchase could displace dozens of businesses and more than 100 families who live behind a busy shopping center.

Chatham Estates is considered one of the few remaining affordable mobile home communities in Cary, but it's on the market along with the shopping center surrounding it.

Chatham Square includes about 50 businesses, with many catering to their neighbors.

The community is home to an estimated 700 people. It covers 40 acres on the corner of East Chatham Street and Maynard Road near downtown Cary. Additionally, about 50 small businesses are in the shopping center.

They’re part of a...

ITHACA, N.Y.—Efforts to make improvements to a manufactured home community on the west side of the village of Trumansburg just got a $5.7 million boost.

The New York State Homes and Community Renewal (NYS HCR) issued the grant to support Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services’ (INHS) endeavor to rehabilitate and enhance infrastructure and amenities at the Compass Manufactured Housing Community, also known as a mobile home park. The award was announced in a press release Tuesday morning.

Technically, the award was made to Better Housing for Tompkins County, which tends to focus on more rural projects within the INHS umbrella. Once a separate...

Residents of Petaluma’s Youngstown Mobile Home Park held a protest Tuesday afternoon in response to threats of rent hikes and closure, even as the city strengthens protections for renters.

About 100 protesters gathered outside the mobile home park on North McDowell Boulevard, holding signs denouncing the park owners’ actions over the past few months, which have included converting the park from seniors-only to all-ages residents, threatening park closure, and attempting to raise their rents by more than $900 a month, residents said.

“When I moved in here I thought, ‘I can relax, I can retire,’” said Youngstown resident Danny Morton. He...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Nearly a dozen tenants of a local mobile home park are sharing their concerns over unusually high water bills after the News4JAX I-TEAM reported the case of a disabled veteran who was being threatened with eviction if she didn’t pay a $2,200 water bill.

Several residents at the Three Seasons Mobile Home Park off Collins Road said they have also been forced to pay outrageous water bills in fear of being evicted.

One of the residents, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of retaliation from the property managers, said they have been receiving these high water bills for years. The residents pay their landlord at the...

About 22 million Americans live in mobile homes or manufactured housing, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and as the housing crisis continues to worsen in places like Arizona, California, and New York, that number could go up.

But for some, mobile homes conjure up an image of rusting metal units in weed-choked lots, an unfair stereotype that has real consequences — advocates argue that mobile homes are not only a housing fix but could also help with the climate crisis.

According to Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, mobile homes are a good solution with a bad reputation. 

It’s unfair, he said, because the...

As Texas’ second-hottest summer on record comes to a close, high heat continues, and residents of a Denton mobile home park say the property’s ban on window air-conditioning units has led to sweltering indoor temperatures.

“It’s like I’m baking in an oven,” Mike, a resident who asked to be referred to by his nickname, told the Denton Record-Chronicle.

With excessive heat warnings nearly every day in Denton County, public health experts have warned against the dangers of high temperatures. But for some residents of Ashli Oaks who say they cannot afford to fix their central AC units, the park’s enforcement of a ban on window units has left...

The new owner of the Pines Trailer Park has spoken.

Louis Najmy of the Najmy Thompson law firm released a statement on Sept. 8 on behalf of island developer and businessman Shawn Kaleta regarding the purchase of the mobile home park at 103 Church Ave., Bradenton Beach.

The announcement was much-anticipated — and the owner highly speculated — since the announcement in January that the park owners intended to sell.

The statement read: “Prime Vacations, founded, built, and run by local entrepreneur, Shawn Kaleta, is proud to announce it has orchestrated the purchase of Pines Trailer Park, one of the most unique island waterfront parks in...

The Miami-Dade County commission voted to establish a pilot community land trust (CLT) program last week with the goal of creating 50 units of affordable housing.

Why it matters: A CLT is a unique model of real estate that can help keep homes affordable for generations.

• Miami is the least affordable metro in the U.S. The median list price for a home was $605,000 as of August, according to RealtyHop.
• The county has a shortage of 135,000 affordable units for renter households earning half of the area's median income or less, Miami New Times reported.

How it works: In a typical CLT, a nonprofit acquires a piece of land through various...

Oxford City Council voted down two ordinances that would have paved the way for an affordable housing development in Merry Day Park off College Corner Pike. 

By a vote of 2-5, council declined to change the designation of the 4.7-acre park from “preserves and greenspace” to “employment corridor” in Oxford’s comprehensive plan. 

Following this vote, council unanimously voted against amending the zoning map for that area. The Oxford Planning Commission recommended against both measures.

“Kids don’t have a place to go, there are no other parks,” said Angela Jones Wright, who lives in the nearby mobile home park. “If they don’t have an outlet...

In a sign of how dire the Coachella Valley’s affordable housing shortage is, new residents are continuing to stream into an east valley mobile home park with tainted drinking water and myriad other health and safety issues, and county officials have been unable to stop them from moving in. 

County officials have spent the past few years working to relocate residents from Oasis Mobile Home Park in Thermal, utilizing a $30 million grant of state funding secured in the state budget by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia in 2021. But officials have struggled to quell the issue of new residents moving in, creating a cycle of new families moving into...

Housing isn't just about buildings and land; it's about the people and communities they shelter. With that in mind, Sebastopol is stepping up by revising its mobile home rent regulations. This move aligns Sebastopol with other cities that recognize the importance of safeguarding the rights of mobile home residents.

Owning a mobile home while renting the land it is on presents a unique challenge. Sebastopol’s city manager, Larry McLaughlin, points out that these residents are both homeowners and tenants, a duality that demands tailored protections.

Sebastopol...

The rain fell hard on Lyons, Colorado. In September 2013, it poured for days, soaking the foothills and filling the creeks and streams.

Bonnie Newman wasn’t worried, even though her mobile home was next to the rushing water of St. Vrain Creek. A meteorologist friend told her things would be okay, and nobody had told her to evacuate. But after days of rain, sometime after 1 a.m., something changed.

“Suddenly there was water,” Newman said. “Lots of water. It was a current of water, and it was right through my yard.”

Fire trucks pulled into the aptly-named Riverbend mobile home park, sirens blaring. Over a loudspeaker, a voice told everyone...

CHICAGO (AP) — A lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses nine mobile home community management companies and a mobile home market data provider of conspiring to fix and inflate lot rental prices at more than 150 locations across the U.S.

The lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Chicago claims the management companies bought up mobile home parks and used “competitively sensitive market data” provided by Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Datacomp Appraisal Systems Inc. to exchange pricing information and conspire to raise rents.

“In the face of these significant manufactured home lot rent increases, some manufactured home residents...

MADELIA — After a 15-year wait, a Madelia mobile home community is finally getting its community room. The space will double as a storm shelter for its 150 residents.

The facility is scheduled for a fall construction start with an anticipated opening of spring or summer of 2024, said Marjory Gilsrud, Madelia Mobile Village Cooperative president.

“This building will act as a gathering place for our residents,” she said.

The primary funding source for the $800,000 building was the state Legislature-funded Manufactured Home Community Redevelopment Grant Program. The grant will provide funds for a facility offering safety from storms and...

In May, La Plata County Assessor Carrie Woodson informed property owners of a staggering rise in the value of their assets. Based on sales that took place between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2022, the median increase in property value was 20%.

But one category of properties stood out: mobile home parks.

The county’s mobile home parks – once a bastion of affordable housing – doubled in value, and rents are following close behind.

And when tenants such as Alethea Morris, a resident of Durango’s Junction Creek Mobile Home Park, are asked if parks are becoming unaffordable, the answer is unequivocal: “For a single mama bear who’s got two...

The owners of Sandpiper Mobile Home Park were again conditionally denied approval for their ill-conceived solar panel project by the Architectural Review Board. We are all supportive of solar power but not to line the pockets of property owners. The options they were given were to terminate the project entirely or present a reduced version to the Carpinteria Planning Commission. I don’t think they will accept either one because of their huge investment in this project. My guess is that they will come back with the original development plan and risk a planning commission denial. If denied, things could become complicated because of their...

The River Terrace RV and Trailer Park is just upstream of the Kenai River Bridge in Soldotna. To the right, there are temporary and seasonal RVs parked along the banks of the river. To the left, about 40 trailer homes house a low-income community, many of them seniors.

On July 27, trailer park residents got notice to vacate by May 3, 2024. The notice says the closure is related to “planned changes in the future use of the land.”

Daniel Lynch has lived in the trailer park since 1995.

“There’s no need for these people to become homeless, and that’s what’s gonna happen to the majority of them,” Lynch said.

He said there are few options for...

HOULTON, Maine — After nearly six years of undrinkable chemically contaminated water flowing through their pipes at the Houlton Mobile Home Park, residents will soon get relief, according to the park’s owner.

Once the final piece of financing is approved that is.

State testing showed unsafe levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in the well water almost as soon as Tony Brettkelly purchased the mobile home park off the Old Woodstock Road in Houlton about six years ago, he said.

Park management has been supplying residents with bottled water ever since, although the contaminated water is used for laundry, showers and...

Some of the most enduring images of Hurricane Idalia will be the tree-battered and flood-damaged mobile and manufactured homes in the storm’s wake — a sight that’s become all too familiar in the coastal US. As Florida’s communities rebuild, government leaders everywhere must take steps to protect a key source of affordable housing in the age of climate change.

A new state law in Washington aims to give tenants of manufactured housing communities the opportunity to purchase and own the lots they rent from landowners.

“Manufactured home communities are often sold off-market,” says Victoria O’Banion, Spokane-based marketing and acquisitions specialist with Northwest Cooperative Development Center. “When the park wasn’t listed, residents didn’t know what was happening and that the park was being sold.”

The legislation, known by some as the Notice of Opportunity to Compete to Purchase bill, was signed into law on April 6 and now requires owners to share their intentions to sell with residents,...

AFTER building a dream tiny home for $25,000, a person who wanted to live off the grid found out they had nowhere to park it.

But thanks to a clever letter, they now live for $350 a month and zero mortgage on a Christmas tree farm.

L. Gilbert (@_l_gilbert_), who uses they/them pronouns, is an artist living in California who became sick of living with roommates in the nation’s most expensive state.

As a way to make their own affordable home, they built a DIY tiny home using salvaged lumber and new materials like a trailer and solar panels.

In a recent video for Kirsten Dirksen’s YouTube channel, Gilbert gave a tour of their unique tiny...

It's hard enough to afford or rent one home in Denver, let alone an entire mobile home park. The residents of Capital City/Montevista Mobile Home Park in the Westwood neighborhood defeated the odds when they raised nearly $11.5 million to buy the land their homes sit on.

This is a community of hardworking families in Denver, and after the mobile park home went up for sale last year, the community rallied to find solutions.

After ROC also known as Resident Owned Communities pulled out of helping out in February due to safety concerns. The community was worried, but then Sharing Connexion, a nonprofit that connects nonprofits and affordable...

Residents of Little Woods Mobile Villa on Lakeville Highway worry they might end up homeless if the management company running their mobile home park makes good on its threat to close it.

That was the message of many park residents as they spoke out against a possible closure during a news conference held Tuesday evening at the park and broadcast over social media.

The news conference – organized by members of Littlewoods Neighbors United, a group of residents that formed in response to the threat of the park closure – was the latest in an ongoing saga of upheaval at mobile home parks throughout the county.

In Petaluma, an update by the...