Mobile Home Park News Briefing

What a crazy world we live in today.

Over time, words with beautiful meanings occasionally get degraded into ugliness. “Gentle,” for example. Originally meaning good natured and kindly, it was twisted into “gentry” in the Middle Ages by very un-gentle land barons seeking a patina of refinement. Then it became a pretentious verb — to “gentrify” — meaning to make something common appear upscale. And now the word has devolved to “gentrification,” describing the greed of developers and speculators who oust middle-and-low-income families from their communities to create trendy enclaves for the rich.

The truth is that progress is terrific and the desire to live a better life is what has fueled all the great things that society has created from nice homes to quality healthcare. As part of the continual quest for better living there is continual displacement. Obviously, nobody likes to see the 80-year-old forced to find a new home, but you have to weigh the benefit to hundreds of people versus the detriment of a few. That’s how society makes decisions: by majority rule. It’s the basis of our political and economic system.

The title of this article has nothing to do with reality. The new law would require park owners to give residents a couple months of advance notice if they want to sell, so the residents can somehow band together and buy the park under a “resident-owned communities” fantasy. But here’s the problem. The residents will never be able to pull that off 99% of the time (that’s the actual statistic). Only a bureaucrat with zero real-life experience would think this is even important enough to waste the time to debate and try to pass into law. The politicians must have needed something new to pander to their base over and this was low-hanging – but meaningless – fruit.

The property owner has the right under Florida law to develop this site into any purpose they desire – including having it revert back to raw farmland. Residents have absolutely no legal right to block that owner’s right. It’s called basic American property law. Sure, the residents don’t want to leave because their rent was dirt cheap. But that’s why the park is shutting down, right? You can’t have it both ways. As I’ve said for a decade now LOW RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT.

Back in the 1980s the town of Watauga, Texas took an eminent domain action to rid themselves of some ramshackle old businesses that ruined the drive-up approach to their city. The business owners complained that they could not find alternative, cheap retail space and many shut down. But the look of the town improved overnight, new housing developments popped up, and around 10,000 people benefitted greatly from the loss of about 10 businesses. That’s called “progress” and it happens every time something is torn down to make way for a better use.

In this case a dilapidated mobile home park is being razed to make way for a new lakefront development. The entire town is thrilled but around 50 residents hate it. They will have to just accept it and move on.  

Yet another article in which the writer claims that it’s “evil” for big companies buy up poor condition mobile home parks, inject capital into them, bring them back to life, and then raise rents. In fact, the writer sums up the problem with four words in a sub-heading “rules and raising rents”.

OK, if you want to live in a dirt-road dump then that should be your right. But that is NOT what 99% of mobile home park residents want – and it’s insulting to insinuate they do. They want to live in a nice, clean, safe place with working utilities, professional management and strong rules enforcement and they are willing to pay up for that.

This article reminds me of the 2020 push to “defund the police” in which woke journalists made their case that Americans hate law enforcement and prefer complete anarchy. Does anyone still believe that?

What’s “evil” is when you force 99% of the park residents to live in squalor to accommodate the 1% that like to live that way.

When a Midwesterner reads articles like this it makes them think “why would anyone want to own property in California?” What a nutty place to own a business!

Looks like planning board member Samantha Burdick has been hanging out with the guy pictured in the above article:

Planning Board Chairwoman Samantha Burdick on Tuesday chastised the new owner of a mobile home park off West River Road for what she said are ongoing problems with flooding, poor roads, issues with rats and cracking slabs beneath homes.

So let me get this straight – the park owner is responsible for flooding (Act of God), ‘poor” roads (can she please define because they look fine in the photo), rats (Act of Mother Nature) and ‘cracking slabs beneath homes” (which have zero impact on safety or home condition -- and how can she see them anyway?).

It would be refreshing if Burdick could just be honest and probably say “I hate trailer park residents and I don’t want two more houses full of them in my city”, right? Never going to happen.

This is more of a photo expose than an article but it might be leaving out some important facts:

1. If those are abandoned homes then the landlord has no ability to secure them or make any repairs until they receive title to the homes via an abandonment process, which can take months (or even years in some states). So if that’s the case then you can’t blame the park owner as their hands are completely tied.
2.  If that trash is on occupied lots then the park owner has no ability to get rid of it without the involvement/permission of the person renting the lot. And, on top of that, it’s the tenant’s responsibility.

But another key part of this article is “why can’t the complaining resident just pick up the trash themselves?” I mean in the time they spent complaining they could pick up every piece of litter in the photos. I am always picking up litter in mall parking lots and everywhere else I go and I’m sure you do, too.

Every photo of this park – including the park office – shows it is well maintained. There are two sides to every story and this writer is sadly presenting only one of them.

A group buys an old mobile home park and is going to tear it down to make way for a new self-storage facility. When asked why the park has to be torn down, the owner responds with:

“many of the homes are “well beyond” their economic life and the park itself has experienced ongoing domestic water, sanitary sewer and road infrastructure issues”

Yes, that’s right. The park needs a ton of capital-intensive work and the owner doesn’t want to do it. But when a private equity group or other new buyer tackles this type of project -- to bring an old park back to life -- they are assaulted with criticism. There probably was a rent level in which this park was worth more as a mobile home community than as a self-storage building, but it was clearly not hitting that mark. Once again, LOW RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT.

Didn’t really see any “big ideas” in this article. I’ve been to Maine and some of these ideas are not even as good as having L.L. Bean start knitting affordable homes in a number of attractive yarn colors – and with a lifetime guarantee.

Here’s a novel idea that could work:

• Create a Board that works directly with park owners interested in redevelopment, on a voluntary basis.
• The Board figures out the rent level required to keep the park from being changed into another use.
• The Board blesses the rent increase, no matter how large, as the final attempt to save the park from the wrecking ball.
• The park owner then raises the rent to that approved level, regardless of the size of the increase, and is insulated from the media accordingly.
• The tenants are happy because the park is saved from demolition and they pay the higher amount of rent.

That’s a whole lot more effective than all this “resident-owned community” nonsense that isn’t doing anything to save 99% of parks that are redeveloped.

This article was obviously written by AI and people are going to freak out when they see that the computer sees $800 per month lot rent as “budget-friendly”:

In general, the average monthly rent for a space in a trailer park ranges from $200 to $800, making it a budget-friendly choice.

I read in the last few days that Amazon Alexa, when asked “was the 2020 election rigged?” would answer “yes, it was rigged in many different ways”. Amazon then scrambled to reprogram it. I guarantee you that somebody is going to see the $800 rent comment – which is 100% accurate – and then rush to limit the computer to a lower number. It’s a real drag for many groups that AI doesn’t know how to lie yet and the truth can be painful.

I always get concerned when you throw public funds at bureaucrats with no actual business experience. Take, for example, this quote from the article:

“Their investment gave us the accreditation to leverage $19 million more to develop 40 net-zero affordable homes”

Wait a minute, $19 million for 40 housing units works out to $500,000 per house. That’s not exactly what I would call “affordable housing” would you? Time to call in the auditors.

If you spend $5.85 million for a 3/2 mobile home in a mobile home park the only word that really comes to mind is “stupid”. I have driven by these Malibu parks many times and trust me; they aren’t that great. The only argument you can make for paying millions of dollars to live in a 1980s mobile home in a “trailer park” is that the stick-built homes are $10 million. I think the better option is that, if you can’t afford a $10 million real home, you might be better off not living in Malibu at all. It reminds me of the old bumper sticker in the 1970s that people used to put on Ford Pintos that said “My Other Car Is A Rolls Royce”.

Interesting the contrast between British and U.S. media. If this guy was in the U.S. he’d be attacked as “evil” for driving through a mobile home park in a $1 million Bugatti – but the British cherish the concept of eccentricity and see no problem with a successful person engaging in materialistic behavior. “Cheerio” park owners from across the ocean!

Look, park owners have no problem selling properties to the residents. But this story kind of shows the problem. The only reason this particular deal got done was that the city had to chip in $330,000 for just 14 residents. Not many cities are willing to throw money like that at virtue-signaling initiatives. Let’s face it, pretending that this story is a blueprint for thousands of other parks is as ludicrous as me finding a $5 bill in a parking lot and then writing an article that says that if you can find $5 a day in a parking lot you can make an extra $1,800 per year to subsidize your income. These residents got lucky that the city fathers were in a crazy money-tossing mood – nothing more.

People read articles like this and group “tiny homes” together with “mobile homes” and then use the condemnation of “living small” across both housing types. For clarification, most tiny homes are 400 sq. ft. or less while the average mobile home is around 1,200 sq. ft. That means that you can fit around three tiny homes into every mobile home. This author’s complaints are all about the insanely small size of the tiny home. I agree. I have no idea how anyone could be happy living in a space that small. That being said it’s a shame that most Americans don’t know the size difference and will think that mobile homes are “tiny” too and that both are being condemned by the author.

This is not a story about a “trailer park”. It’s a bunch of RVs parked along a road by a baseball diamond. Sure, it’s a terrible idea to let people live in a school bus and to have complete strangers that near to little kids, but this is not a story about a “trailer park”. So why did the New York Post not accurately substitute the words “RV” for “trailer” – which they correct in the article itself? Because the average American sees the words “trailer park” and hopes to read about sex and violence. The U.S. media has literally turned 300 million Americans into Pavlov’s dogs.

I love that everyone today wants to try and attach a “hidden agenda”:

Why does it cost more to insure a smaller home? The insurance industry points to greater susceptibility to wind, hail damage, tornadoes, fire, theft and vandalism compared to a traditional home. But there could be more to it: Some consumer groups say insurance companies may be more likely to take advantage of “financially vulnerable” people, charging them more money for fewer benefits. There also might be outdated discrimination from the days when mobile home parks were mostly located in poor and crime-ridden ZIP codes.

If I go to Taco Bell and order the bean burrito is it because I really like the taste of a bean burrito or instead because I’m making a subversive statement against the meat industry?

Look, insurance industries are tired of taking huge losses by writing policies that are known losers. That’s why they’re leaving Florida and California. The days of corporate subsidy of bad risk bahavior is over on the part of the insurance community.

Yes, tiny homes are often flimsy, top-heavy, built by amateurs, and are often located in weird areas. I wouldn’t insure them, would you?

The truth is that private equity groups have saved literally thousands of mobile home parks from the wrecking ball by buying old parks, pouring millions of dollars of capital into repairing and replacing aging infrastructure, and raising rents to levels that fend off redevelopment. The late Sam Zell was part of a “private equity group” when he ushered in the whole concept of bringing old parks back to life in the 1990s when nobody else would lift a finger to save them. Over a million residents of these “private equity group” parks have a nice place to live because of these visionaries, and 99.9% of these residents would say that they are thrilled by their new living standards.

This article is so dumb that it refutes its own argument only a few paragraphs earlier:

“This is not where we want to be right now. I'm sure you know how horrific the market is,” Gina said. “Even as high and as atrocious as the lot rent is, where in the hell in Dane County am I going to find a place to rent for $585 for three people? I'm not going to find that anywhere.”

Is then followed by:

(Mobile home parks) also come with a host of challenges: Property managers often are limited on budgets to provide anything other than minimal maintenance, and rents can be exploited by out-of-state investors to make money off of vulnerable populations.

So let me get this straight, the tenants state that they live in the park because the rent is ridiculously low and then are surprised that the owner can’t afford to keep the property up and then are even more shocked when new owners raise rents? That’s like someone checking into the Tiki Motor Court for $19 a night lodging and then calling down to the office and complaining that the furniture is old and there’s a light bulb burned out.

Here’s the solution. Raise the lot rents to a level that the park CAN afford to bring itself back to life and 99% of the residents will be very happy indeed (plus fend off the wrecking ball of new development). But not the tenants quoted in this article because they would be unhappy if the park gave them a million dollars and would respond “wait why not two million dollars you cheapskate out-of-state owner!”

One final note: what’s up with this new hatred of “out-of-state” owners? Virtually every hotel, restaurant, shopping center, apartment complex, self-storage facility and Walmart is owned by an entity that is “out-of-state”. Is that supposed to be an insult or a conspiracy theory? Because it’s just plain stupid.

Maybe it’s because I’m a born skeptic but does anyone seriously believe this group going to put that much investment into something with a 1960s mobile home park in the middle of it? My personal bet is that they will wait until they get the 100 acres of apartments and retail approved and built and then tear down the mobile home park and put the fanciest part of the new development there – probably a hotel since that’s the exact right parcel size. Does anyone else think that? Does anyone not think that?

Clearly this is about more than a mobile home park shutting down for redevelopment:

"We're the ones that work everyday for other people," said Cristian Medina, another resident. "We do construction. We do roofing. We're the ones that do your painting and pressure cleaning. We do all the different type of work and for what? This is what we get back?"

This is a story about a property owner demolishing a mobile home park to make way for a more profitable use of the land. It happens in America every day, and I can drive up the Interstate and show you all types of property redevelopment in action. However, when it comes to mobile home parks this normal story turns into a weird narrative of the evil park owner taking advantage of the helpless resident and, in this case, it even takes on the tone of the UAW’s Shawn Fein wearing his “Eat the Rich” T-Shirt.

I have been saying for over a decade (and apparently nobody is listening) that the only way to keep these parks in operation is significantly higher lot rents. How high? High enough to make it a more profitable use of the land than the alternatives.

Can you get any more hypocritical? The old owner is getting offered over $1 million per acre for his land. His current rents don’t justify anywhere near that figure as a mobile home park. He summed it up for the reporter:

“My property has gotten old and needs to be revived. Everything changes. This is just a continuation of Cary’s growth.”

And I bet you $50 if the owner instead raised the rent to a level that would justify $1 million per acre in value, the media would go berserk claiming that he was ruining lives by gouging rents and the residents would stage a protest.

So the media and residents have pretty much done this to themselves. The old guy is just too smart to get involved in that type of mess and is simply going to take the easy way out and sell the land for redevelopment.

I know nothing about this case or this park but I do know that having a tenant run up $1,000 per month in water is certainly not outrageous. All a resident has to do is fill up a commercial water tank on a work trailer every night (landscaper, paving, construction, mobile car wash) and you can easily exceed $1,000 per month. So let’s stop the theatrics.