Mobile Home Park News Briefing

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

For decades, the government has propped up coastal areas by offering flood insurance at huge losses to the U.S. taxpayer, rather than forcing people to move inland who can’t afford the insurance. In this case, the goal seems to be how to maintain people who don’t earn enough money to live in an area to remain in place. Is that really helping anybody? Surely not when the subsidies would give them a higher quality of life somewhere else.

You have to love an article that starts with “how can the owners sleep at night?” That’s probably true – they can’t sleep because they can’t decide whether to redevelop this property into an apartment complex or a big box retail center. When will the media realize that if you publicly shame owners for raising rents and enacting rules then they will take the easy road and simply tear these old things down and build higher uses for the land? Do they still teach economics at colleges that offer journalism?

OK, I’m trying to be patient. Maybe some of these writers wrapped up college during Covid and on-line learning didn’t work for them. But this has to be one of the dumbest quotes of all time: “some manufactured home park residents in and around Sequim said they’ve received increased rents on land leaving them with less money to live.” Is there a way that rent could go up and they could have more money to live? This is, yet again, woke journalism in the state of Washington. You simply cannot mandate price levels in a capitalist society. That’s called socialism or communism. When the state government aspires to be less capitalist, it’s time to start moving to another state.

Lot rent of $518 per month is not in any way unreasonable. Apartments average around $2,000 per month nationwide. Yes, it’s going to keep going up. Yes, corporate owners are going to raise rents as part of bringing old parks back to life. Yes, after all the hikes they make there’s no place even remotely as cheap to live. Yes, it’s called the free market because you’re free to move out if you want to. Yes, even with higher rents the park is full. Yes, there are 10 people willing to pay the higher rent for every 1 that won’t.

When the park has vacancy it will lower rent. It has none and the phone is ringing off the wall. Why are park owners held to a higher level than milk and eggs, which have doubled in the past few years?

America has been under a cloud of endless insurance losses for years now – from fires to hurricanes. Given society’s obsession with litigation and the simple fact that insurance companies are businesses and are focused on profits and not losing money annually, there is no doubt that insurance in California and Florida will be endlessly harder to obtain and retain except at huge cost increases. And that will naturally translate into much higher lot rents in those markets. The woke media might as well start writing the articles now to criticize those given rent boosts, as the insurance picture in California and Florida is becoming desperate.

This is going to be a real problem for California park owners as insurance rates are going to skyrocket. No wonder so many catastrophe movies (like San Andreas) are based in California. It’s not just because the studios are there. Between earthquakes, fires – and now flooding – this is becoming the place to buy property with a short shelf life.

The best quote in this article came from a resident that said “he’s looking to sell his mobile unit and move to housing that’s more stable. But he has yet to find anything near the rent he pays for his lot, which is $850 a month.” Absolute genius. Harass the park owner in the middle of a blizzard demanding that frozen water lines be fixed, get the State of Colorado and media involved to advance your false narrative, and then whine when the solution is to maybe have to move out. Here’s a message to everyone in the U.S.: mobile home parks are not non-profits and if you harass owners enough, they will simply put up the “Land For Sale” sign and you will be cut loose. If you want a world in which there is no economics then sign up for Section 8 apartments and let the government determine your future.

These reports are great for large, institutional owners, but you have to determine your rents the old fashioned way by calling the competition yourself. There’s just no easy way to figure out where you fit in regards to rent levels.

A family owned a mobile home park. They got an offer from a land developer that’s three times its assessed value as a park. The developer told the paper “It’s an optimal location for alternative use, but that use is yet to be determined”. Everyone is mad. The tenants are mad that the park is being torn down and they are being displaced. This is what happens when residents fight higher rents and the media delights in publicly shaming owners. If the owner had raised the rents more, maybe the park would exist. But he would have had to fight the media’s public shaming, so why bother? Maybe someone should send this article to all of the above journalists?

It’s pretty sad when the best part of the article is in the comments section, such as this truthful obersvation "it should be illegal for the government to tell property owners how much rent they can charge tenants. They won't charge more than the market will support because they don't want to have vacancies, so there is always a balance between supply and demand. Anytime the government artificially tips the scale we go into the land of unintended consequences.” So let’s get this story right. This idiotic town in California has decided that the park owner can only raise rents by 70% of CPI with a cap of 4%. Just wait for the “Land For Sale” sign to go up and the park to be become an apartment complex or Home Depot store. Where do you find idiots like this?

It’s the classic tale the media hates most: lot rents are too low and the park gets razed to make way for apartments. If the lot rents had been higher, the park would still be a park, in all likelihood. But the residents would have fought tooth and nail against that, and the media would have jumped on the bandwagon to publicly shame the owner. So the correct solution was to simply demolish the park and make it into a more profitable use. I have tried to explain this to the media for years now, but they refuse to accept the reality of economics. Mobile home park residents nationwide need to accept the fact that mobile home parks can be other types of uses, too, and if rents are not higher then parks will be bulldozed. You can’t have it both ways. I wish that MHAction would stop inspiring people to make themselves homeless.

It’s always been a lot easier to build RV parks than mobile home parks. That’s because the RV industry has done a great job of promoting itself (the “Go RVing” campaign) and people in RVs don’t go to school at a cost of $8,000 per kid to the city and county. The failure of the mobile home industry to put any money or effort into PR has created a scenario where the average American has a terrible opinion of the product.

This quote says it all: “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.” That has to be the dumbest list of all time, and none of those things would improve the position of renters in any way. So here’s my list by comparison: “relax the UBC so that modular homes can be built on vacant city lots, offer tax incentives for residential property owners not to redevelop into a non-residential use, and expand the Section 8 program so that it is available to more people”. Of course, I win. But when you take on the Biden administration, that’s not a very high bar.

Boy, they sure showed the world who’s boss. A non-profit recently “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.” I guess the park owner is laughing all the way to the bank, while the non-profit puts this grand tale all over its website. Here are some real-life news bulletins for this same Vail newspaper: 1) you could have given those tenants $120,000 in cash each and they would have been much better off 2) institutional investors would never look at a 20 space park (it’s about 20% of the target size of 100 lots) and 3) $2.4 million is a rounding error in today’s America if you want to be a big shot in philanthropy. That might make you sound big at the cocktail party at the Red Roof Inn lobby, but that’s about it.

A guy bought an old RV park for $5 million. His intention would appear to be to develop it into a different use. The residents don’t want to leave even though he has terminated all leases and told them to be out by 1/1/2023. Looks like he followed all of the laws and the tenants are trespassing and are violating his property rights – not the other way around.

3D printed homes is a very interesting technology and I have no doubt it will one day be a big part of the U.S. housing market. But to get there you have to change a lot of ordinances and the Uniform Building Code. You also have to get the cost lower than $300,000 for a 1,500 sq. ft. house with 3D printing. I have seen articles on 3D printing in Europe that is really, really inexpensive. Don’t look at it as a cool way to build a beach house but instead find ways to create affordable housing with it and you’d have a winner.

So a part of a mobile home park had no water for two days because the water main broke. And the delay was caused by the city which mistakenly thought it was their main and told the park to stop work. And that intro leads the writer into a public shaming festival on the owner because he raised rents and enacted basic rules, like no beach towels in windows. What a world we live in.

This just goes to show the bias of the media against mobile home parks. The park lost power because the electric company had their lines go down. The park owner did nothing wrong. And the media is claiming that the park “has residents who cannot live for more than a few hours without electricity” and that somehow the park owner is responsible for that. If you truly can’t live for more than three hours without electricity you need to have a generator on your home in case the power goes out. If the tenant doesn’t buy a generator then that’s at their own risk. Don’t pretend that the park owner has any involvement in this story at all.

This title is wrong, This is not about a mobile home park but simply a single 1977 mobile home. The city says it can’t be brought in because it violates their ordinances. The minimum mobile home age they allow is 1982. You can buy a 1982 mobile home for about the same price as the 1977. Sell the older home and buy a newer older home and bring it on in. Case closed.