Mobile Home Park News Briefing

I’m afraid these residents are in for a rude awakening:

“The county has a collection of four mobile home parks that are up for sale right now. If they sell, new owners or property managers could raise their rents, or try to build on those properties and remove their homes altogether. That being said, those parks are potentially eligible for help from the state or county, if they can find grants to have the county purchase the parks and keep rents low”. 

Most bureaucrats talk a big game until you ask them to write a check and then they hide under their desks. Similarly, any new buyer will surely raise the rents significantly as these parks look to be mismanaged from the photo and will require new professional leadership and capital expenditure, and that will almost certainly require higher rents. And, of course, they are also in a prime position for redevelopment.

Any way you cut it, the probable outcome is that the parks will either be torn down or the rents will go up. I see little chance of the bureaucrats rushing in to save the day as you could make the same argument that they should buy the local apartments, too, and the list goes on and on.

Nobody really appreciates mobile home parks until they are on the verge of going away – kind of like some sad country western song.

Great news Austin residents! City Hall is proposing to build next to your subdivision:

·         Accessory dwelling units

• Rezoning manufactured housing communities
• Low-income housing.

Better call your realtor and put your house on the market before more people find out what’s about to happen.

OK, this is virtually cut-and-paste #4 this week on the topic of how great the world would be if the tenants owned the parks:

After months of fundraising and working with the Denver-based nonprofit Elevation Community Land Trust, Westside made a successful offer and formed a housing co-operative. Now owned jointly by its residents and Elevation, the park operates as a community land trust, which removes land from the real estate market and transforms it into community-owned property. Two decades after she first arrived in Durango, Chavez, a DACA recipient, is now the park’s property manager and the co-op’s vice president.Their voices will be heard now. They weren’t listened to before.

Are you brainwashed yet?

Wait a minute … are you saying that a city hall might have violated the law and now won’t hand over any of the notes or minutes from the meeting? That they are refusing transparency regarding their actions? Welcome to the new U.S.A.

OK, do you spot the scam going on in the media right now:

“It occurred to me that 90% of the questions in this four-page survey were satisfied by my local community, Marin Valley Mobile Home Country Club (MVMCC). It is a close-knit mobile home park of over 400 residents, owned by the city of Novato since 1997, with competent oversight from an elected group of residents. Novato doesn’t provide these healthy living activities, such as yoga or book clubs, as recommended in the survey, but the residents themselves provide them through volunteer commitments.However, the city has provided security and stability by serving as a nonprofit entity-owner, with reasonable, affordable rents. A defined 40% of the lots are reserved for low-income residents.”

There are only around 300 resident-owned mobile home parks in the U.S. out of 44,000 parks. So this is all nonsense and not worthy of this much media time.

So why are there suddenly a ton or articles on how great life is when residents own their own communities? Clearly, this is a big media push that is being promoted by a number of non-profits behind the scenes that are trying to brainwash Americans (and politicians) that this is the greatest idea since sliced bread.

Smart people will spot that this is a scam and not buy it. But unfortunately, idiots will.

I really like this idea. I have long thought that affordable housing (yes, including mobile homes) are not nearly as attractive as they could be. The industry needs some fresh ideas and I have no doubt that a gifted college student may well contribute the idea that revolutionizes the way housing looks. I see all these cool designs in European design magazines at the bookstore and wonder why the U.S. can’t come up with its own fresh ideas. Maybe this contest will make something happen. It can’t hurt.

Read this article closely as it’s nothing but smoke and mirrors. The public spends $1 million to build 8 housing units that are as small as 395 sq. ft. and which equates to $125,000 per unit. All this to save people $100 per month in rent using this goofy coop structure. The free market is good at this stuff and bureaucrats are not – so please stop with this stuff as you are embarrassing yourselves.

Before you get worked up, go to the end of the article that sheepishly mentions that the bill only restricts lot rent increases to one time per year and with no limitation. The writer kind of hyped up the rest including the title.

Basically, more pandering and virtue signaling to their voting base – with more than a little help from the media.

Thank heavens that most PA legislators know that actual rent control dooms all mobile home parks to almost certain redevelopment over time.

A 1,300 sq. ft. home for $130,000 plus the cost of the land is not exactly a big deal. You can attain that in pretty much every city in the U.S.

But remember that Jackson is also the city that can’t even keep their public water system working for months now. I was there recently and the hotels have “boil water” signage at the registration desk (not sure how you do that in a hotel). Read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_crisis

Realizing it’s Jackson they probably messed up the decimal and it’s $1,300,000 for a 130 sq. ft. house. That’s more likely.

“I am also concerned about housing justice. There is a significant shortage of affordable, accessible housing in Cleveland and across Northeast Ohio. Therefore, I am concerned about the destruction of existing affordable housing at the Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community in favor of the expansion of Euclid Creek Reservation. Cleveland Metroparks could play a key role in keeping the Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community open.”

Gee, not another article about how great it would be if residents owned their own parks? What a coincidence!

Reminds me of the story of Esther Sullivan, the Associate Professor in Boulder, CO who took credit for causing virtually every negative industry article for a several year period (including John Oliver). It’s amazing that U.S. media is so lame that single individuals can pervert the entire media conglomerate to take the wrong position on a macro scale – and that Americans are dumb enough not to spot this manipulation.

There’s one item completely left out of this article:

Less than two years ago, Claudia had never heard of Bermuda Estates Mobile Home Park, and the Bermuda Estates residents she now shares easy chatter with were at that time fearful of being forced out of their homes. The owner, J&J Equities, LLC, was selling the park, and the prospective buyer planned to redevelop the land and build townhomes. This meant the nearly 40 families living at Bermuda Estates would be displaced, their homes, meticulously tended rose gardens and memories plowed under to make way for new homes that would not be affordable to them.

That item is what did they pay?

My bet is that they paid $100,000 per lot or more. And then you have to ask yourself “wouldn’t these people just be better off if they took the $100,000, relocated to a cheaper place than Virginia, and bought a nice stick-built house for cash?”

This whole “let’s buy the park to fend off redevelopment” nonsense is really nothing more than virtue signaling by bureaucrats and non-profits who want acclaim for saving 40 households housing when, for the same money, they could have paid for 160 people to go to college, or 800 people to renovate their homes and lower their utility costs.

Last winter, the residents of Whippoorwill Hill Mobile Home Park in Wiscasset struggled with continuous shutdowns of its water supply and the park’s failure to maintain its roads and ditches. This problem continues today..Meanwhile, during the past two years, Maine Real Estate Management and its anonymous owner have raised the park’s lot rents by nearly 66%, all while failing to fix the problems that are causing physical harm to all of our residents at the park.

Well, I guess we all know what comes next. Goodbye mobile home park and hello new apartment complex. And the resident who wrote this letter to the editor will get top billing for causing the park to shut down. If you read the article, the owner is trucking in water until the repairs are completed, which costs a fortune. Yet they get zero respect from the residents. There are two sides to every story, and I’m betting $50 that the park owner is in the right here. They are trying to save the park and bring it back to life, and a few loud residents are fighting them every step of the way.

I don’t know any of the facts on this story, but the optics to me, the reader, is that Douglas County succeeded in their mission to get rid of these mobile home parks:

“Justag LLC was one of the bidders rejected in July because plans for the properties included creating a mobile home park or manufactured home community with 59 sites.Creating a mobile home park on the sites again would require a zoning change, which is unlikely to gain support from Parkland town officials or the county, Liebaert said. The mobile home parks preexisted zoning regulations adopted in the 1970s, he said. The property is currently zoned for residential development and a mobile home park would require commercial zoning, he said.”

As I recall the county took over these properties claiming they were in substandard condition. Then they were going to sell them off, but the only bidder wanted to operate them as mobile home parks. So they killed that off as fast as they could.

This is the reality of city/county attitudes regarding affordable housing. They don’t really want it at all, but to say that might trigger cancel culture so they instead come up with these absurd stories of how it wasn’t really their fault.

A mobile home is a parking lot. If your car burns down you still are responsible to remove the car and pay the rent until it’s gone. It’s not rocket science. But instead, here’s what the residents are saying:

"We're very frustrated because we've been left in the streets. We've been left on the street, nothing left. If I haven't been able to find a home because I have no money, how am I supposed to pay for this?" said Martin Verduzco, a resident who lost his home due to the fire. 

What the park owner is doing is following the legal methodology to remove the burned homes themselves. Somebody’s got to do it. Obviously, the residents are not going to. The park owner ends up paying the bill, as usual.

Instead of the writer of this article pointing out that the park owner is the good guy who is actually taking it on the chin, they portray the residents – who are neglecting their legal responsibility – as the heroes. When will the U.S. fixation on lack of personal accountability ever end?

This was an interesting article until I got to the actual pricing: $1 million for 1,866 sq. ft. The whole point of alternative construction methods is to save money – not spend $500 per sq. ft. on something that is, at best, experimental with no stats on resale value. Makes no sense to me.

More nonsense about back-seat driving residents and media reporters trying to second guess complicated land development issues – kind of like me trying to critique brain surgery.

Another article about a county government shutting down a park. Between owners wanting to redevelop for more profitable uses – and city/county/state governments wanting to shut them down to remove affordable housing units from their neighborhoods – mobile home parks may soon be listed as an endangered species.

The buyers are paying $16,250,000 ($200,000 per lot) for a rundown park. Exactly how would this not be a redevelopment deal? The reason the residents have probably not received notice is that the owner is not going to do so until after the deal has closed. How could anyone think that there will be any other outcome? 

This is an issue for each resident to decide. If you live in a flood zone, you get flooding. It’s called accountability. How can people suddenly wake up and say “oh my gosh, I didn’t know I could be flooded?” when they’ve known that from the onset. If the State of Vermont now steps in and says “you can’t live in flood zones” then many people who have planned for periodic flooding will lose the use of their property. Is that fair?

It’s like electric cars: they’re not for everyone. I have no desire to live in a 300 sq. ft. house, nor do I know anyone who does. I think those who want to “live small” are already working on that dream. But I also think that houses under 1,000 sq. ft. don’t fall into the average American’s list of goals, and that’s why you’re not going to see a ton more interest. Mobile homes hit that 1,000 sq. ft.  threshold and that’s why they’re in endless demand. I’ve personally sold hundreds of homes and I can tell you that under 1,000 sq. ft. is a deal killer.

No, I don’t buy into this viewpoint. Although there’s no question that rents have gone up, $400,000 homes and $2,000 per month apartments are only in giant cities. Nobody ever talks about the alternative. Here’s the actual stat from Wikipedia on life outside of the city:

Rural areas in the United States, often referred to as rural America, consists of approximately 97% of the United States' land area. An estimated 60 million people, or one in five residents (17.9% of the total U.S. population), live in rural America.

So if you move out to the 97% of America that is outside major cities, you can get a nice house for $100,000 and a nice apartment for $500 per month. I know, because I live in a town of 4,500 an hour outside of the big city. These “transient” people described in the article need to give up on their “big city” obsession, move to rural areas, get stable jobs, and provide a nice home for their families. This entire “I can’t afford the real world” nonsense is the opposite of personal accountability and the truth is that there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to live in a Winnebago in a WalMart parking lot. If that’s your lifestyle then the problem is you and not the U.S. housing market.

Sure, these are cool. And 144 sq. ft. for $8,325 means a 1,000 sq. ft. model (which is much more livable) would only cost around $50,000. And, yes, this is the solution to the affordable housing crisis. And, no, you can’t build them virtually anywhere in the U.S. due to the Uniform Building Code. And the construction industry will never let that code be changed. So when people tell you that it’s impossible to build affordable housing they’re not telling you the truth. The truth is that the government ensures that you can’t with codes that most people don’t even know exist. Change the codes and between this type of option and 3-D printed homes you could provide $150,000 stick-built dwellings in cities across America (the average lot in the U.S. is $80,000 so you have to add that in, too, thus the $150,000 price point).

The developer is going to put 100 apartments at $1,500 a month on a parcel that held 50 mobile homes. That’s because you can make apartments two and three stories high. Mobile home parks can only exist on on level. No way the park can compete with this income differential and clearly it has to come down.

However, the moral is that residents, governmental agencies and the media need to appreciate that mobile home parks are coming down everywhere and they better do more to make owners not want to redevelop their land.

Here’s probably what a “hot mic” would have heard minutes before the meeting:

Alderman #1: “so how can we kill off this stupid trailer park concept?”

Alderman #2: “I know, let’s say we think that the people will block the roads with their cars and the ambulance can’t get in”.

Alderman #3: “Yeah, I like that one, but let’s also throw in about how we don’t have enough water pressure”.

Alderman #4: “I don’t care what you guys tell them, just hurry up with the vote because I don’t want to miss Pizza Night at the Eagles Club.”

I know nothing about the details of this park or the allegations, but it sure looks suspicious that these bureaucrats won’t simply fix the water now, but will only invest the money if the owner sells to the residents. The optics to me makes me wonder if this is really just a case of trying to coerce this owner into this ridiculous resident-owned community dream. Wait until the residents see what the new lot rent will be once they pile debt on this property. Good luck.