Do you ever wonder why only landlords have rent control in California, and not everybody else? Fuel prices double, food triples, but only landlords get criticized and punished for the impact of inflation. In a capitalist country, it seems odd that price controls would only be applied to one finite portion of the economy.

This article illustrates everything that’s wrong in America today! I’ll let you decide the moral.

This quote says it all:

The partnership’s asking price then became $16.25 million. Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page and a Give Send Go page were created to raise money for the HOA’s efforts, according to their organizers. The GoFundMe page, Save Our Old Florida Home, was created March 29. Gay Gavde-Forte of Cincinnati is identified as the page organizer. Suzanne Hynes is identified as the creator of the Givesendgo page. As of April 21, the GoFundMe campaign had raised $2,015 of a $1 million goal and the Givesendgo page had raised $1,227.

Somebody should bring this quote to every case in which the residents claim they are going to buy the property under the first option. All these first options do is waste everyone’s time.

OK, let’s be honest, Sarah Paulson is not a celebrity. I’ve never heard of her. Most of the “celebrities” in Paradise Cove – like Stevie Nicks and Pam Anderson – are no longer box office draws. I know that media groups like to sensationalize this park as the home of Hollywood royalty (maybe 20 articles so far) but Betsy Johnson is not exactly Elton John.

Even after the increase fo $600 per month, this mobile home park is nowhere near at market rent levels for D/FW. I understand that the residents hate this increase, but what do they want the owners to do? The residents have two paths ahead. They can either pay the higher rent (and other increases surely to follow) or move to something they think is more affordable. If they can’t find something that fits better, they need to stay put. But it’s their choice. The owner probably has 100 calls a week from customers more than happy to pay that higher rent.

This same tough choice is happening across all industries right now, from food to fuel, and from single-family homes to apartments. Prices are going up – way up – and only likely to move higher. You can’t hold that back, you can only adapt to it.

In all fairness, the average social security check in the U.S. is $1,200 per month. At $600 per month, the new rent is only about 50% of their social security income. The writer’s proportionality is way off.

Why do they call this property “Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park”? It seems odd that the owners use the old vernacular on a property where the mobile homes sell in the millions of dollars. Why not adopt a classier new name like “Paradise Cove Cottages” or just “Paradise Cove” and leave the “mobile home park” off? If you look at some of the ads by local realtors selling mobile homes in this park, they almost deliberately use the “trailer park” label as though it’s a draw. Weird.

Even tiny home developments strive to erase the “trailer park” association. Maybe they’re wrong?

Wow, this quote says it all regarding the closure of Trails End Mobile Home Park in Fresno:

“Action News reached out to Harmony Communities, the company that owns the mobile home park, to ask about the decision. In a statement, Chief Operating Officer Sherrie Johnson said: "After two years of lawlessness, no rents paid and people moving in and out without any registration or applications, we are attempting to restore order within the scope of state law and according to our agreement with the City of Fresno and the courts. Legal Aid's attempt to circumvent state law leaves this community and the surrounding community less safe. We will continue to honor our obligations and comply with state law at every turn."

So much for the one-sided narrative that the residents were all sweet angels and the park owner was the evil one.

And then there’s this classic quote by one of the residents :” "I don't think there's a place in this town I can afford to rent on my income - on my social security," Leslie Wright said”.

And that pretty much sums it up. The owner was the good-guy, providing the tenants with an incredible deal and they basically blew it by refusing to appreciate what they had. And now it’s gone.

Even more evidence that California mobile home park owners are thrill seekers.

This is not a new idea. The late Tony Hseih of Zappos.com fame also had this idea. It failed miserably. His personal assistant gave us a tour of his development called “Containerland” in Las Vegas years ago, and told us that he abandoned using storage containers because they heat up so bad in the summer that it’s like living in an oven.

I know it’s a free country, but whoever wrote this article is pretty much wrong about everything. No, people don’t prefer to live in properties that have no amenities or luxuries of any type. No, people don’t dream of building their own RV from scratch by mounting assorted crap on a suburban. No, most people with kids have no interest in raising their family in a tiny travel trailer. No, most RV owners do not live in poverty. No, they should not give media space to people who write articles that basically insult the intelligence of all known forms of life.

A Democrat wants to regulate not only the safety of Colorado drinking water but also the “smell, taste and color”. I guess that’s fine, but whoever votes for this proposal needs to be reminded that the science required to alter the “smell, taste and color” will probably be really expensive, and lot rents will go up as a result. I’m not sure how many people want to pay to correct the “color” of their water – or if they will have that option. Since most Colorado mobile home parks are on city utilities, the only way to fix the “smell, taste and color” will be for the municipal water district to do so, which will probably cost tens of millions of dollars to accommodate on their part. Colorado is not exactly brimming with excess cash as a state, with the 20^th largest debt load and nearly $20 billion owed to creditors. Spending money chasing the goal of Fiji water coming out of facets is not going to come cheap.

Not to offend anyone, but you kind of have to be insane to pay $4 million plus $2,500 per month in lot rent to live in a mobile home park – even if it’s in Malibu. You could spend $4 million without lot rent to get a tremendous oceanside brick house in just about every other beach town in the U.S. I get a call about once a year from somebody looking at buying one of these mobile homes in Paradise Cove, and they want to know what happens if they lose their lease for the lot. I explain to them that the mobile home they just bought for $4 million would be worth about $4,000 as a 1970s trailer on a sales lot along the freeway. On the Sam Zell “risk vs. reward” index I can’t understand any of this. But then again, I’m not a Californian.

OK, let me decipher this for you. When they said “the city council received 18 letters and emails from area residents opposed to the proposed development, one raising concerns and six in support” what they really meant was they received 18 letters opposed from the actual neighbors, one raising concerns that lives about a block away and six in support that actually worked for the developer and mobile home sales lot.

“If I were to come home and I would look over there and see a mobile home park on that hill, I would not want to stay there,” resident James Travis told the commissioners. And that was the end of it, as the council voted “no” on rezoning the land to mobile home park. And James Travis’ thoughts are echoed across America when the idea of building a new mobile home park comes up. That’s why the concept of building new mobile home parks as an investment never works. By the time you find a piece of land so far out in the county that nobody complains about a mobile home park, there’s no demand to rent the lots or buy the homes.

When a private owner does this, they are publicly shamed as evil. When the City of Benton, Arkansas does this, it’s basically no problem. Love the double standard.

These articles remind me of someone hawking a timeshare. The numbers don’t compute but the salespeople try to use your ego as a tool to make you make a clearly stupid decision sometimes. Just read these two quotes from the article:

1. "Just to have that peace of mind, to know that our rent is going to be locked in for awhile and not keep going up, and also knowing that our rent monies … are going back into the property, that is the cool part," she said.
2. The required rent increase to go co-op was even steeper in Evergreen Village Cooperative in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, — from $460 a month to $750 to pay off the $12 million loan.

When the residents buy their own property, what do they get? A big debt burden and higher lot rent most of the time. And what they lose is professional management that actually collects rents and doesn’t play favorites. Not a great trade.

The folks that turned down the new owner’s request to go from $300 to $600 in monthly lot rent are the ones that signed the death warrant for this property. They have nobody to blame but themselves. Here’s the only part of the article that tells the truth: 

“We’re disappointed because we fought really hard to stay here. We went to the city council meetings, you know, we wanted our voices to be heard, but obviously, it wasn’t enough,” Franquez said. Most units pay about $300 in rent. Several residents told GV Wire that Harmony tried to nearly double the rent. “They did try and they were only able to raise it $20,” Franquez said.

The median home price in Fresno is $350,000 and the average apartment is $1.770 per month. So let me get this straight: the bureaucrats will only let the new owners raise the rents to $320 per month – which is $1,450 per month less than apartments? 

If they had let the rent go to $600 per month, these residents would still have the sweetest housing deal in Fresno. Instead, they are all displaced and the land will be built into something else.

Smart move, Fresno officials.

When you are an early-stage buyer into any planned development, you always run the risk of the plans being altered. There’s not a thing the council to do to solve this situation and giving false hope to the residents that bought into the concept early is only going to lead to further disappointment.

Let’s cut through the B.S. and get down to the facts. The reason it now takes 80 days to renovate a property instead of 29 pre-Covid is that nobody wants to work anymore. You see it all around you. Covid is long gone but nobody is returning to the job. When you give U.S. workers a 2-year snow day, they apparently never come back to school.

Here’s a quote from the article: “Village residents are irked that their monthly property rental rate shot up to $425 per month from $355 under new ownership.”

Here’s the housing stats for Bethlehem, Ohio from Bestplaces.net:

• Median single-family home $143,400
• Average 2-bedroom apartment: $702 per month
• Average 3-bedroom apartment: $892 per month

So $425 is a bad deal? Seriously?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) clearly wrote this article, and the mistakes are hilarious. For example, the term “manufactured home” came into vogue in 1976 and not 1989, and the average mobile home does not cost $169,000. But when you use AI it relies on other published information to come up with what it writes and there is very little information on the mobile home park industry to go by.

Sabatini said they could pursue legal action against the “grossly large” amount of the fine.

“We’re not done fighting yet,” he said.

On Wednesday, Mayor Castor applauded the court’s decision.

“I hope this sends a very strong message to everyone that the City of Tampa cherishes our tree canopy, will work hard to protect it and won’t tolerate the illegal destruction of protected trees,” she said via text. “Tampa needs more trees, not fewer, and everyone should think long and hard before cutting corners to remove beautiful trees.”

This town had only 60 residents, and the tornado happened to hit a mobile home and an RV. Of course, a stick-built house is stronger and can withstand a tornado better, but at 170 mph nothing is going to survive. This article deliberately is trying to pretend like mobile homes and RVs are inherently dangerous, which they are not. 

Interesting how the media hates mobile home parks when they’re operating – delighting in publicly shaming the owners -- and then suddenly misses them when they’re closing. You can’t have it both ways.

Sure, this park appears to be a mess, but all that trash, furniture and debris is NOT coming from the owner. How come there is not one mention of accountability of the residents for these living conditions in the entire article. Sure, the rules were not enforced, but that’s a two way street and the owner was probably too good natured to enforce the rules and things got out of hand over the years. If the media wants the park to be torn down and the residents displaced, then just keep doing what you’re doing. A better solution would be for the city to go to the elderly owner and work with them – providing grant money if needed – to bring the park back to life.