Down go the mobile home parks and up go the apartment complexes. And why not? They get three times more rent and you can stack them three high on a lot. The best quote from this article was “former resident Martin Martinez said his family moved out of Meridian Estates in November. They found a home to rent and still live in town. The rent they pay is about three times more than their $800 rent at the mobile home park, he said”. How can the media publish articles like this and then publicly shame park owners for raising rents in the next one. Surely people aren’t this stupid.

Of course they are. Is this writer any good? Unfortunately not.

I have to admit I was excited to read this article, thinking it would provide some smart ideas on saving mobile home parks from the wrecking ball. Instead it was a worn-out piece on the concept of residents buying their own park. As somebody who has sold parks to the residents several times, let me tell you how it really works: 1) it takes a really long time 2) a huge number of the residents who try fail 3) the rents go up just as much anyway 4) only about 1 park per month pulls it off in the entire nation. Give it up, bureaucratic fools. Instead focus on things like giving park owners a pat on the back, give them grants for infrastructure repair, and tell idiots who propose laws like this to stuff it.

Only in California would you spend $100 million to build a bridge that serves two smaller mobile home parks. And then find out that you still have to tear one of them down. Here’s a memo to California politicians: you’re nuts. They could have bought everybody in these parks a nice brick house in Sacramento – for cash and debt free – plus given them each two debt-free new cars and a $100,000 trust fund and still come out ahead financially. Do these stories of bureaucratic waste drive anyone else nuts?

That’s a very common scam that some park managers engage in: tell the owner the homes are vacant and then rent them and pocket the rent. To guard against this you need to constantly audit your vacant homes with such tools as simply “facetiming” the manager and having them walk into the supposedly vacant homes and prove their vacant. If they refuse then you know that they’re cheating.

I wish more groups – such as MHAction and all U.S. media outlets – would take note of articles like this in which relates to the reality of what happens when a mobile home park gets redeveloped into a different use. In this case, most of the residents live in pre-1970 mobile homes which means they have no HUD seal and can’t be moved. So basically the people will have to abandon their homes and start from scratch. This is the byproduct of low rents which make other uses more economically attractive.

$1,032 per month seems like a really high mobile home park lot rent until you go to Bestplaces and see that a single-family home in Steamboat Springs is $805,700 and the average apartment rent is $1,903 per month. So that means that even at the new rent, those folks living in the mobile home park are paying at least 50% less than everybody else in town for housing. Perhaps the bigger story is that people who choose to live in a city as expensive as Steamboat Springs with very little income are making a conscious decision and will be clearly sacrificing housing options in pursuit of scenery, etc.

Real smart. This media outlet declares “8 On Your Side is helping a local mobile home community fight an unexpected rent and tax increase, cutting through the red tape and showing them a path to challenging the double whammy”. OK, I’ll make a $10 bet that this park is torn down and redeveloped within a few years. Why would the owners bother with the hassle when they can just tear it down and build a Home Depot or an apartment complex? When residents finally realize that publicly shaming park owners results in parks being torn down they will then realize that the media is simply helping them become homeless. Want to have your park torn down? Apparently just call “8 On Your Side” and let them start the process for you.

FINALLY A GOOD ARTICLE! I am in complete support of any mobile home weatherization project. I have seen first hand how bad mobile homes are at holding heat and there are so many easy fixes that can save residents a fortune in utility bills such as covering windows with plastic, caulking windows, weather strip doors and thermal switchplates. This writer deserves a gold star.

Parks flood if they are in a floodplain. So do houses, apartments, duplexes, retail centers, hotels – everything else that sits on top of land. Why is this of interest to anybody?

Finally a story that makes sense and is a win/win. The state is going to help park owners fix their failing infrastructure so that parks remain parks and residents have a higher quality of life. These are the ideas that really fix the American affordable housing crisis, and help prevent properties from redevelopment. Single family subdivisions have long benefited from these type of efforts, so why not the “high density” form of detached housing?

Here’s what this story is really about expressed in one quote :“the proposed legislation would increase the allotments dispersed by the Mobile Home Relocation Fund by more than 60% for some cases. It also increases the amount the landlord must pay to the fund for each tenant filing for relocation assistance”. Now I’m all for helping people move homes from the 1990s to new, but what happens with these programs is that the parks that are most prone to redevelopment are also the oldest and contain a ton of homes from the 1960s. 1970s and 1980s. These homes are not really transportable and the cost to move them is more than they’re worth. They need to put age requirements on these type of laws and the older homes should be a small cash payout based on value. Spending $50,000 to move a 1965 home – like they do in California – is blatantly stupid.

The writer hit on a big point that few realize: a typical mobile home factory can build 7 mobile homes per day. Compare that to a single-family home subdivision. If you are trying to build housing fast, mobile homes are the best way to go. That’s why the government bought 500,000 mobile homes in WWII – it was because they could get housing fast. The only issue with this article is the emphasis on “mobile homes”. I think the future of the industry – when trying to solve the affordable housing crisis – is to focus on modular and tiny homes and 3-d printing and everything BUT mobile homes which most people have a terrible stigma against.

A 41-space mobile home park is shutting down. And it’s the narrative the media fears most. Here’s the key line from the article: “in the eviction letter, sent out this week, it says ongoing infrastructure issues have forced the park to shut down”. That translates to low rents make it economically unfeasible to rebuild the infrastructure. So the media won with their public shaming odyssey with this owner. They talked the owner into redeveloping the land into a more profitable use rather than face the wrath of tenants complaining about higher rents and the media trumpeting that. The media cannot handle the fact that the park owner – if you complain enough – can elect just to raze the property and end the harassment.

Let me get this straight – you’re going to buy a 20-space mobile home park for $2.4 million to make it a resident-owned community. That’s $120,000 per resident. The people in the mobile home park have limited funds. Why wouldn’t it be smarter to move them to a much lower-cost state and buy them a nice brick house for $120,000 in cash, and tell them “OK, you’re set for life and all you have to do is earn enough to cover utilities, taxes, insurance and food. They could then get a job anywhere at minimum wage and have a great life. When I read these articles it always makes me wonder if the writers and non-profits have ever ventured to states like Louisiana where you can buy a nice brick house all day long for $100,000 or so. You can see them on Realtor.com. Why would you be spending huge money to keep people living in a state they can no longer apparently afford?

This is the other side of resident-owned communities that people don’t know about: sometimes the residents later sell it for a profit. Nobody in the media likes to acknowledge it, because it shows that America runs on capitalism. This article is so dumb that it’s painful to read. Here’s the story summed up in one sentence: “residents buy the park, sell it at a profit to mobile home park operator, then whine about them raising the rent”. You can’t have it both ways. They knew the rent would go up but wanted that up-front cash from the sale. These residents have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Are you seeing a repetitive theme this week? In this article, the writer admits that “it can be hard to find affordable housing in Durango. The average home goes for more than $700,000, according to Zillow”. So if prices are that high, wouldn’t it be better to help pay to relocate these residents to a lesser-expensive metro? Surely they can’t be happy barely getting buy on the extreme prices of everything that goes with living in a $700,000 neighborhood, such as $10 hamburgers. If ROC was buying these parks for $20,000 a space, then you’d say “there’s no other options at that price” but when the lots cost more than a single-family homes a couple states away you have to question what the real point to any of this is? Personally, if I was one of these residents I’d rather have the debt-free nice brick home in Kansas.

I’ve never seen this park and have no idea who’s telling the truth, but it always seems odd when the city complains about the condition of the mobile homes when the park is 100% owner-occupied with zero park-owned homes. I’m not sure that people understand that park owners own the land and the tenants own the homes. As a result, how is this guy responsible for the condition of them? Why is the city not giving citations to the residents instead?

For those who thought they had seen enough government waste during Covid, here’s a new classic:

“In 2021, at the urging of 49 organizations made up of mostly local nonprofits, Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, requested $30 million in the next state budget to relocate residents from the park. Gov. Gavin Newsom authorized the request in July 2021.”

That’s $30 million to relocate 200 homes in this mobile home park. That works out to $150,000 per household. The article states these people have virtually no income. You could simply transport these people to Mississippi, buy them all a nice brick home for $100,000 cash, give them another $50,000 in cash to get them started, help them get jobs at minimum wage, and they would be set for life with a quality of life a thousand-fold better than what they’re doing.

This article is the very definition of idiocy.

Archway Communities is converting four dormitory buildings at the former Johnson & Wales University campus in Denver into 154 affordable apartment homes.

The nonprofit purchased the dorms for $13 million from the Urban Land Conservancy (ULC), which acquired the campus in 2021 in partnership with Denver Public Schools and the Denver Housing Authority.

Archway will adapt the buildings into studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments for individuals and families earning between 30% and 60% of the area median income. Situated on the historic campus that was once home to Colorado Women's College, the new Mosaic Community Campus currently includes a central quad, community kitchens operated by the Kitchen Network, St. Elizabeth’s School, and a host of other amenities.

"We have found a great partner in Archway Communities to preserve these beautiful buildings for a community beneficial use and provide much-needed affordable housing," said Aaron Martinez, ULC vice president of operations and sustainability.

Archway closed on two of the buildings at the end of 2021 and closed on the second two buildings and its construction financing in December 2022. Our financing stack for the acquisition and adaptive reuse includes $34 million of historic and low-income housing tax credit equity from Hudson Housing Capital and Chase Community Capital, a $16 million permanent loan from Boston Capital and Western Alliance Bank, $7.5 million from the Colorado Division of Housing, and $3.9 million from the city of Denver. The land that the dorms are located on will be held in a renewable 99-year ground lease by ULC to ensure its use for community benefit in perpetuity.

Archway expects to begin delivering units for occupancy in early 2024. “We are extremely proud of our team’s effort to close financing and get construction started here,” said Julie Stern, Archway’s director of real estate. “Our partners at the Denver Housing Authority, Shopworks, Taylor Kohrs, SB Clark, Boston Capital, and Hudson Capital, were key to our ability to make this happen and ultimately to begin delivering much-needed affordable housing to the Park Hill Neighborhood.”

In a separate move, Archway also recently closed on the purchase of Montview Manor, an 88-unit property for seniors in Denver. The sales price was not disclosed.

Archway purchased the building from the Montview Building Corp., an affiliate of theMontview Presbyterian Church.

“This is a naturally occurring affordable housing community that did not have formal long-term rent restrictions,” said Archway CEO Sebastian Corradino. “In other words, it could have easily been converted to a market-rate apartment project. We are proud to have partnered with the Montview Building Corp. to ensure that this property will remain affordable to low- and moderate-income seniors for many years to come.”

Financing for the Montview Manor transaction involved a first mortgage through Impact Development, secondary financing from a Colorado Housing & Finance Authority program designed to support preservation projects, acquisition financing from the Colorado Division of Housing, and grant and loan funds through the Denver Department of Housing Stability.

The State of Washington wants to enact rent control. Why not? They’ve made every other bad political decision they possibly could for years now.

I love woke articles like this that portray residents not buying their park as some type of a crisis. The residents tried  to buy it during their “first option” and failed. No reason was given for the failure, but it was probably the fact that the property needed substantial infrastructure repair. The new owner is replacing the roads and utilities, and raising the rents as a result. But all the writer wants to talk about is the higher rent, not all the improvements that went with it. The writer states: “three residents confirmed that their rent increased by $125 following the road completion in Nov. 2022. For resident Sheri Payne, that hike represented a nearly 40% increase over her previously stabilized rent. The writer fails to tell you that the park’s rent is probably $300 per month under market even at that new rent level. Could the residents have completed all this infrastructure work and kept the rents low? Absolutely not. This is nonsense.

The good news is that the article clearly identifies that RV parks are not subject to any form of rent control, not even in the six states that have rent control. The bad news is that anyone would think that they would. What’s next? Hotel price control? If you tied the increase in bureaucrat salaries to rent levels, nobody would ever again bring up the concept of rent control.

Shame on this city council for even considering building a 47-lot mobile home park in a neighborhood where the median home price is over $300,000. Of course the neighbors don’t want this, and who would blame them? If you have a $300,000 house and they put up a mobile home park next to you, that home will drop to $200,000 or less overnight. If the council is going to screw over the folks that live near this proposed site, they could at least not insult their intelligence and pretend it’s a good thing for them. I’m sure that not one person on th council voting on this lives in that neighborhood.

Does the name “factory-built” housing sound attractive to anyone? In a country in which we always equate hand-built assets as superior, branding anything as “factory-built” seems to me to be a negative. I wish the industry could come up with better names.