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...

Home living in Austin just got a little smaller — well, for some.

In another move to create more attainable places to live, the Austin City Council on Thursday gave a thumbs up on changing land rules to allow people to live in an RV or tiny home in more places across the city.

The city already allows residents to store these properties on their land. The proposed rule would allow people to hook up utilities to a tiny home or RV so they could live in it without it being in a mobile home park, campground or other designated area.

Austin has become increasingly expensive for working-class families, pushing many to the city's outskirts. Over...

City of Powell River staff members are suggesting bylaw updates to distinguish between modular and mobile homes.

At the September 12 committee of the whole meeting, manager of planning services Daniella Fergusson outlined a report to council, which stated that factory-built or prefabricated houses include manufactured homes assembled on site. Her report stated that in recent years, staff have received more enquiries from the public about the possibility of building modular housing, however, city bylaws currently discourage that construction.

“The focus of this report is to consider bylaw updates to our official community plan, the zoning...

Since taking over management at Heritage Hills Mobile Home Estates in mid-August, Chana Kolpien and her husband have chopped down window-high grass, dealt with broken water lines and gathered tons of garbage.

“We’re on our third 20-yard roll-off,” said Kolpien, who is also getting bids to remove vacant trailers.

She must first determine which mobile homes are occupied or unoccupied.

“There’s supposed to be 91 living (occupied) homes,” Kolpien said Wednesday. “In my opinion, 18 for sure need pulled out and there’s probably another 15 that need (taken out).”

During the early August Pulaski Township supervisors meeting, Heritage Hills...

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...

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 mobile home park on 1.65 acres in East County has been sold for $4.4 million, according to a real estate brokerage.

Shady Lane Mobile Home & RV Park, with 41 spaces for manufactured homes, is located at 244 Shady Lane in El Cajon.

“Shady Lane Mobile Home & RV Park was a Watkins family generational asset,” said Dustin Wilmer, vice president of investments in Marcus & Millichap’s San Diego Del Mar office. “The property had not traded hands since 1981 and this was the first time it has ever been advertised for sale.”

Wilmer said the property attracted 10 offers within its first 72 hours on the market. He represented the seller, a limited...

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...

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...

More than 10 families living in the Wikiup mobile home park are being evicted. According to a spokesperson for the community, owned by RHP Properties, residents are not following the rules.

Tomasa Hernandez and her family are one of those families being asked to leave. She says this puts them in a bind since this is all they can afford.

The family adds they've always paid their rent on time, but now they're being asked to leave by mid-September.

"I spend my time crying because I am always thinking, where am I going to go with my kids and my sick husband?" cried Hernandez.

To make ends meet, Hernandez sells fruit and vegetables on weekends...

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...

A TINY home community has brought peace of mind to residents in a small town, but efforts to continue to build out the housing solution have stalled in partisanship.

Lilac Homes - a tiny home community in Kennewick, Washington - opened 16 homes to people in need in 2022.

The Kennewick Housing Authority procured $3.8million to develop a tiny home community on an acre of land, according to the local CBS affiliate KEPRTV.

The housing authority aimed to provide shelter for historically marginalized communities in the neighborhood.

"We are going to be able to house individuals who we have targeted," Lona Hammer, a representative of the housing...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...