OK, let’s cut the B.S. Periwinkle Mobile Home Park is being torn down because student housing for Grand Canyon University is more profitable than a trailer park with $450 rents. The seller of the park weighed the offer from Grand Canyon University to what he was making with the park and the student housing offer was higher. How high would the lot rent have needed to be to make the Grand Canyon offer lower than the park was worth? I don’t know, but maybe $700 per month would have done the trick. That’s the issue that needs to be discussed in order to save parks from the wrecking ball. The question should not be “how can the park owner keep the rents ridiculously low” but instead “how high do the rents need to be to keep the park a park?” I’ve been preaching for a decade that the only thing that’s going to keep mobile home parks alive is much, much higher rents. If you don’t accept this, you’re an idiot.

The writer of this article just doesn’t get it.

“The plight of the residents, he maintains, underscores the need for legislative change to counter the power owners of mobile home parks have over tenants.“The man did win. Maybe that’s the way Utah legislative laws are set up. The one gets richer, the poor get poorer,” he said.”

No, Lesley’s mobile home park did not get torn down because mobile home park residents don’t have power over the owner of the park. It got torn down because 152 apartment units is way more profitable than 55 mobile home park lots. In this case, there’s no way you could have raised the lot rent high enough to stop the apartment development. Instead, you have to accept the reality that mobile home parks have really good locations and cities will provide the developer any zoning necessary to get rid of them.

The moral is that the tenants and media need to stop harassing and publicly shaming mobile home park owners because there is always some type of development that any mobile home park can be turned into – and pretty easily.

There is some part of society that celebrates taking conspicuous consumption to a new level. Paying $3.5 million for a 800 square foot mobile home is not prestigious or cool -- it’s just plain stupid. Wasting money does not make you a big shot, spending it wisely is what makes you superior. Think of everything that could have been done with that $3.5 million to benefit others. You could buy 10 people a debt-free home, for example, or put 20 people through college.

Look at the photos in this article and tell me how these people are not complete idiots for turning down $502 million for this land – that’s over a million dollars to each resident, free and clear. If this is the best you could do for housing on $1 million then I’m speechless.

As required under the Florida Mobile Home Act, they first offered the park to the homeowners association for purchase. The law requires a park owner to give 45 days notice of an intent to sell to unit
owners and gives those homeowners the first right of refusal. Homeowners in February voted to form a cooperative to rally for the purchase of the land but negotiations between the property owner and the HOA failed April 20 due to a lack of funding, according to Bill Gorman, a real estate professional hired by Pines homeowners to help facilitate the purchase of the park from the ownership.

Could somebody please explain to the world that mobile home park residents are not going to come up with not only $16 million but with $1 million non-refundable on day one (which was required to match the offer). 

Yet another article about New Hampshire replacing mobile home park infrastructure but only if the tenants own the park. The writer somehow thinks this topic will brainwash all park residents to buy their parks. Unfortunately, this writer does not read my weekly submissions, or they’d realize that it’s a ridiculous narrative. They might as well write an article stating that if you get a perfect SAT score you will get free tuition in college (which is true). In last week’s articles I highlighted a group of park residents that were trying to buy their property at a price of $16.5 million and had only been able to raise $4,400 towards that goal when the timeclock ran out. That’s the truth in 99% of all cases.

Seriously? $150,000 for that?

So let me get this straight: the city and media has hounded this park for years about how much they hate it and now they are crying because it’s officially closing. Kind of reminds me of the old adage “the dog that bites the hand that feeds it”. Maybe city bureaucrats missed out on economics class, but the premise of free enterprise is just that: “free”. If you relentlessly harass a business, it shuts down and converts into a new business that it’s harder to be harassed about. You see this going on throughout American cities today, such as WalMart closing all stores in Portland https://www.the-sun.com/money/7549539/walmart-store-closing-theft-shoplifting/. So here’s a new bulletin for Rochester government and media concerning Bob’s Trailer Park: “you blew it”. Just like Portland.

Not much must be happening in Laurinburg, North Carolina when a newspaper prints a major story which is nothing more than a liberal judge dismissing an eviction because the park was not represented by an attorney (which this judge finds somehow offensive). The article admits that all the park owner has to do is simply re-file and have an attorney show up and they will win the eviction. But the resident gets a whopping 30 more days. Big deal.

This article had some interesting input, but the writer missed it. It’s the interesting way that this park came to get city water after decades of well water:

“The City/IWA entered into an agreement with the State Water Resources Control Board to provide a safe and reliable water supply to the 48 households in Elm’s Mobile Home Park,” city officials said in a statement. The project is being funded by a grant from the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) Drinking Water Program.”

If more cities and states would do proactive improvements to old mobile home parks, then fewer of them would close each year.

“In a statement sent to Channel 13, Agora Realty said they are working proactively to help residents relocate because of the park's closure, but residents believe even with their help it will be nearly impossible to find an affordable place to live.”

Maybe those residents should spread the word to all the other mobile home park residents nationwide as to the importance of all park owners making sufficient profit as to not seek redevelopment.

Could this be any more predictable? New owners buy the park and raise rents and enforce rules. A few residents try to get back at the owners by claiming that somehow the park is going down the drain (when it’s really being brought back to life). Some young reporter who makes less than the cashier at Dollar General writes an article about it without probably doing any fact-checking at all or attempting to get the other side of the story.

“Mobile home parks being purchased by developers, subsequent evictions and trauma for the residents will not stop until the root of the issue is addressed. Exclusionary zoning practices must end in order to provide our families and communities the security and dignity that is taken with their eviction, displacement, and destruction of their homes. Our state lawmakers can choose to stop this with three zoning reform bills that are currently at the state legislature, House Bill 2536, Senate Bill 1161 and Senate Bill 1163. Each seeks to unwind exclusionary zoning by: allowing for the construction of casitas, manufactured housing, and affordable housing along the light rail by-right.”

If any of these three bills pass in Arizona, the state is screwed. Property values will be destroyed. More woke initiatives that no sane person would ever vote for, but bureacrats might be coerced into supporting on TV if protestors scream at them enough or harass them in front of their houses.</p>

Yet another example that the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Some bureaucrats are making these 100 families homeless because they have decided – on their behalf – that they’d be better off homeless than living in the mobile home park. And, of course, in the background is probably a city council that is having a party and doing high-fives that the “trailer park” is being shut down and the land can now be made into classier and higher tax-paying apartments. What’s the true story? The park sure doesn’t look that bad in the photos..

I love these articles where the city bureaucrats suddenly realize that there might be problems in this mobile home park. They seriously didn’t see these dilapidated trailers sitting there even once over the past 30 years? The home in the photo is 50 years old and it didn’t just pop in there two days ago. Neither did those residents. If you call the police about a problem tenant or squatter in your park they will typically tell you they don’t have time to deal with it given all the other issues in the city. If you try to remove a problem tenant for rules violations, the judge will not back you up. And then, after you can’t get any help from anyone, the media makes out like somehow the park owner is the problem.

This comment in the article confuses me: “without affordable places to live, new employees and employers will look elsewhere”. 84% of New Hampshire housing is a single-family home on an acre or more. That is reflected in the home prices which, for example, are $360,000 in Concord. New Hampshire is one of America’s oldest states, and it’s been running just fine with highly restrictive housing. Why would they want to suddenly loosen those restrictions? Sounds like some type of woke narrative to me, or maybe fast food franchises have taken control of the legislature. I doubt that even 1% of the state population would welcome this concept.

As I recall, last week a different group of residents were trying to raise $16 million to buy a different property but had only raised $4,000 by the time the first option ran out. This article is about as stupid as giving newspaper space to a high-school basketball team wanting to raise $10 million to buy a Lear jet to take them to their games. Actually that would have better odds of occurring.

When will the media accept that residents buying their own park has about a .000001% chance of success?

It’s the same old story. You get the one resident that fancies themselves an “activist” and then browbeats city administrators to do things that they know are wrong but are easier than having to listen to them scream. Here’s a quote from the article:

A Landmark Estates resident, who is an activist for improving mobile home park conditions, acknowledges some upgrades have been made to the Warren park but that conditions for many residents are still far less than ideal. “They worked on the water and they are still tearing out homes, but about half the park is still having issues with water pressure”.

The article says that the park owners have spent $500,000 in upgrades to infrastructure and homes so far but apparently it’s still not enough to satisfy this resident. If the park spent $500 million, it would still not be enough, in all likelihood.

It’s a problem in this nation that a few screaming people – that do not share the thoughts of 99.9% of the population – are able to bully good-natured people into making bad decisions just to shut them up. I don’t know the facts in this case at all, but it seems odd that the city gives so much weight – and journalistic focus -- to one resident.

It kind of reminds me of the assistant professor in Boulder that was able to get roughly 40 media outlets, including John Oliver, to do slam pieces on park owners – an accomplishment she raved about in an interview later. And it goes to show how the media is completely unhinged at this point.

Transporting mobile homes is a dangerous business. That’s why – despite the high price for the consumer – nobody wants to get involved in it. It’s also the reason that old homes should be demolished on-site and not carted off to the dump.

This is what happens when the park does not charge continually higher lot rents.

This journalist is apparently offended because of the“feudalistic arrangement” between the tenant and the mobile home park owner. My question is “what form of real estate does not have a feudalistic arrangement”? In all property rights, the owner holds all the cards and the tenant has none. Is there some other arrangement the writer proposes? Maybe one in which the owner puts up all the money and risk and then the tenants choose the rent level? Even Karl Marx would tell you it’s a hard sell.

What an absurd article with quotes like “In mobile home parks around the country, millions of tenants and owners are being mercilessly exploited and regularly evicted, often by giant Wall Street firms like Blackstone.” Who wrote this nonsense, AOC? Blackstone and other private equity groups are injecting millions of dollars into these parks and bringing them back to life. That’s like criticizing the doctor that brings the patient back to life and then the relatives complain “I liked him better before”. Give me a break.

It depends on what the promise was. If the promise was to adequately fill vacant lots in mobile home parks, then the answer is “yes”. If the promise was to sell a whole bunch of units and be a neck-and-neck competitor with stick-built dwellings then the answer is clearly “no”.

This article is pretty funny – I would recommend reading it.

If you want to expand mobile home sales, this is the wrong way to do it:

“As the regulator of interstate commerce and state restrictions, Congress can preempt unreasonable constraints on interstate commerce like New Jersey’s requirement that manufactured homes only go in designated “parks.” Congress can also use its spending power to encourage states or local governments to allow fair competition between HUD Code and site-built homes. As the building code regulator, HUD can enable more novel designs and other innovations to allow greater flexibility in home design that blurs the distinction between manufactured and site-built homes.”

You can’t cram mobile homes down the throats of the population by force. You have to do it by making them actually like the way they look and want to live in one. Until that is achieved you will never see mobile home manufacturing even remotely approximate the 400,000+ units sold per year in the old days.