A home ensures stability, diversity and safety for community members. In San Juan County, affordable homes are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing adequate housing as a component of the human right to an adequate standard of living. However, housing once considered a human right is now more often treated as a commodity, slowly fraying the very fabric of communities across the nation.

According to multiple local housing experts, much like the rest of the country, there’s a critical housing emergency unfolding in the San Juan Islands, and it’s only...

Dec. 6 was a big day for Santa Rosa mobile homeowners who’d spent months or even years advocating for tighter limits on rent increases in their parks.

After almost two decades, the City Council voted to update and restrict how much mobile home park owners can raise rent each year on the land under residents’ homes.

Previously, Santa Rosa’s mobile home rent control, which is governed by different laws than other housing, was tied to 100% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the measure of prices for goods and services paid by consumers with a 6% cap. For 2023, that would have been 5.7%.

After negotiations between residents and owners...

Construction has been going forward full steam ahead at the west end of Hafen Lane in Mesquite. Nearly two years after receiving approval from the city, the Mesquite Trails RV Park is beginning to really take shape.

The site grading on the 20-acre parcel is completed, and the utility connections for the 193-space RV park have been installed. The first of three buildings to be built on the site has gone vertical. Work has also begun on the central recreational hub of the park including a large clubhouse, swimming pool, pickleball courts and various other recreational amenities.

The entrance of the park will be off of Hafen Lane. A new road...

Owners of local condominiums and manufactured homes will now be notified when construction projects are proposed near them in the City of Sequim.

Previously, land and property owners within 300 feet of the proposed project would be notified of an application and pending meetings and comment periods.

City staff said they’ve received requests for the change as condo and manufactured homeowners own the structures but not the land — so they weren’t being notified.

Sequim city councilors unanimously approved an ordinance change at their Jan. 9 meeting to update Sequim Municipal Code (chapter 20.01).

Councilors directed staff on Dec. 12 to make...

ACAMPO — Nearly 200 people were evacuated from a mobile home park on Sunday and Monday after another round of atmospheric rivers brought heavy rain and flooding to the area. A mandatory evacuation was ordered for the park early Monday afternoon.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office said it closed Woodbridge Road east of Highway 99 just after noon on Sunday due to localized flooding. By 2 p.m., Sheriff’s Office deputies, along with crews from the Lodi, Woodbridge, Mokelumne and Lathrop/Manteca fire departments began evacuating about 175 residents from the Arbor Mobile Home Park, located at 19690 Highway 99 frontage road.

Closer to 7...

Recognized as the industry standard for manufactured home community market analysis for more than 20 years, JLT Market Reports provide detailed research and information on manufactured home communities located in more 187 primary housing markets throughout the United States.

Datacomp, the publisher of JLT Market Reports and the nation’s #1 provider of market data for the manufactured housing industry, announces the publication of its January 2023 mobile home park comps with occupancy and other vital data on manufactured home communities from 14 markets in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Utah.

Recognized as the...

RIVERDALE — The owner of the Riverdale mobile home park that’s being vacated to make way for development is offering residents $1,500 to $3,000 if they depart early.

Some residents have expressed concern about the financial hit they may face on leaving Lesley’s Mobile Home park given the typically higher cost of renting apartments and other housing types. “As we prepare for the park to officially close on May 31, 2023, park ownership is offering to help alleviate some of the financial burdens of vacating the park,” reads the letter park management sent last Friday, supplied by a former resident.

Per the offer, tenants may get $3,000 if...

You have to wonder how some people sleep at night.

Especially people like the owners of Valley Community, the trailer park at Fruitvale Boulevard and North 16th Avenue in Yakima.

Since taking over the small park in 2021, Hurst & Son — a Port Orchard-based company that deals in real estate investment, property management, construction — has raised rent from $350 a month to $600 in the past year. They’re also limiting tenants’ water use, and they no longer pay for garbage services.

Why? No reason, apparently — they just can. The YH-R tried repeatedly to reach the company but got no responses to numerous emails and phone calls.

Residents...

The White House is weighing a range of executive actions to authorize and expand protections for renters, who pay a high share of their income toward housing nationwide and face little prospect of relief from the new Congress.

Measures being mulled by senior Biden administration officials include sealing eviction records, standardizing rental leases and promoting a right to counsel for tenants facing off with landlords in housing court. Another possibility could be a federal campaign to curb discrimination against affordable housing voucher holders based on their source of income, a practice challenged as a fair housing violation.

A...

A Carbondale-based social justice nonprofit group in December went under contract to buy a 20-unit mobile-home park outside of Glenwood Springs for $2.4 million in an attempt to buck the trend of displacement and affordable-housing destruction at the hands of private-equity groups buying Colorado parks.

The Roaring Fork Community Development Corp. — the affordable housing arm of the nonprofit Manaus — intends to transfer ownership in coming years to 3-Mile Mobile Home Park’s residents, who own their trailers but pay rent for the land on which they sit.

The sellers are the children of the late Ben Krueger, a longtime Vail Valley resident...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — When Mike Runnells moved to Bullitt County in 2020, it was his refuge from a divided city. The Army veteran had been living in Louisville’s west end, where the highly controversial police shooting death of Breonna Taylor had led to ongoing, nightly protests that sometimes brought crowds of police and protesters past his Portland home. 

•  Residents of Live Oaks in Mt. Washington have seen regular rent increases and ownership changes
•  With each new owner, new rent and regulations follow
•  Some residents have rent-to-own agreements with a previous owner, but they aren't being honored
• The Census...

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Private investors have been buying up mobile home parks across the country, threatening to raise fees or close the parks altogether. From member station WBUR in Boston, reporter Simon Rios takes us to a community near Cape Cod where residents decided to fight back.

BOB COSTA: How's everything going?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Good.

COSTA: Good - good to see you. How's it been?

SIMON RIOS, BYLINE: Bob Costa is like an unofficial mayor of Royal Crest Mobile Home Park in Wareham. On a recent afternoon, he walked through the park, saluting everyone he saw with a big smile.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: It's all right.

COSTA: You...

ROCHESTER — A potential agreement with four residents at Bob’s Trailer Park is in the works more than a month after they lost running water in their trailers.

“Two weeks should be sufficient time to iron out a few details,” Rochester attorney Travis Ohly told Olmsted County District Court referee Erin Felten during an online hearing Tuesday.

Ohly, who represents the property owner, Pennsylvania-based TSJ Parks LLC, said work has started in an agreement, but final terms couldn’t be reached Tuesday.

Court staff said negotiations were the cause of an approximately one-hour delay for Tuesday’s hearing, which was attended by TSJ Parks member...

The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.

In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.

• Mitt Romney says a billionaire tax will trigger demand for these two physical assets — get in now before the super-rich swarm

• You could be the landlord of Walmart, Whole Foods and Kroger (and collect fat grocery store-anchored income on a quarterly basis)

• What do Ashton Kutcher and a...

The world needs two billion new homes in the next 80 years, the World Economic Forum said in 2018. The United States needs 3.8 million additional new homes just to meet existing consumer demand, Realtor.com estimated in 2020. And yet, with perhaps 600,000 people homeless in the U.S. and 40 million people living in poverty in the richest country on Earth, it isn’t just about quantity.

It’s also about price.

And, price to the planet. Construction is already the source of 40% of our carbon footprint globally. How do we house people effectively, efficiently, cost-effectively, and in a planet-friendly way?

According to innovative housing...

MOORHEAD — For many Bennett Park Cooperative residents, news of $2.6 million to better the manufactured home park’s infrastructure came as a surprise.

But most knew how they wanted the money to be spent.

“The roads. I hope it will help the roads around here,” said Edwin Eumans, a resident of the park for 10 years.

Other residents said the streets inside the park are filled with potholes, which cause damage to vehicles.

Eumans said the roads have drainage problems; rain pools during summer. In the winter, when snow and ice cover the roads, the potholes aren’t visible.

Some of the manufactured homes aren't suitable for extreme cold. Back...

Residents of Oasis Mobile Home Park in Thermal will have access to safe drinking water through 2023 with a new $883,930 state grant. But the water won't come from the taps: The funds will be used to provide bottled water to households.

The State Water Resources Control Board began paying for bottled water at Oasis in October. Before that, the state, Riverside County and local community partners had been covering the cost since July.

The bottled water is not a long-term solution, officials acknowledge, but a stopgap while plans are drawn up for spending more than $50 million in state funding to both relocate Oasis residents and expand...

Rents and home prices rose dramatically in Florida over the past few years.

In an annual trends report published earlier this year, the Florida Housing Coalition documented the progress and challenges to achieving housing affordability in the state.

The incoming CEO of the housing coalition, Ashon Nesbitt, said there’s positive and negative indicators to note.

Although fewer people are experiencing homelessness in Florida compared to a decade ago, residents are being exponentially squeezed by housing costs.

“Homelessness is decreasing throughout the state, but because of the cost-burden issue at the same...

On Tuesday, the National City Council moved forward with a new ordinance that will provide a temporary rent cap for all mobile home parks within city limits. The ordinance goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, and is good through the end of 2024. 

The decision to intervene in mobile home parks, which typically fall under state jurisdiction, comes after the Keystone Trailer Park increased its rent by 20 percent on July 1. Elected officials said the ordinance was a good first step but acknowledged that more work needed to be done to keep the cost of housing low. 

“It is long overdue,” said City Councilman Jose Rodriguez. “We need to make sure...

John Piazza remembers when he first moved to Lee’s Trailer Park in Revere in 2000, after his rent skyrocketed in Boston.

Piazza fell in love with a 720-square-foot mobile home, finding it more spacious and affordable than his small apartment in the North End.

He said the park owners charge him just $575 a month for the lot under his home — a fraction of what he would pay in rent for an apartment in Greater Boston. He also paid $20,000 for the mobile home itself, far less than the cost of a traditional single-family home or condo.

The 84-year-old planned to spend the rest of his days at Lee's Trailer Park. But last year, the park was sold...