Mobile Home Park News Briefing

OCEANSIDE — The city is considering waiving registration fees to ease rising cost burdens on mobile home park owners and residents.

While mobile home park owners are required to pay the fee, they can pass on half of that fee to park residents. The collected fees go toward a fund that helps the city pay to administer Chapter 16B of its municipal code, also known as the Manufactured Homes Fair Practices ordinance. 

First formed in the 1980s, the ordinance provides a rent control element that caps rent increases for only mobile home parks in the city and ensures park owners receive a fair profit. Oceanside is one of the few cities in the...

There is a trailer park in America where celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey, Pamela Anderson, Stevie Nicks, Minnie Driver and Sarah Paulson have all called home in recent years.

It's known as Paradise Cove Mobile Park and it's located in an exclusive section of Malibu where Pacific Ocean-side mansions go for hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The park holds 265 mobile homes across 85 acres, many of which are rusted and aged thanks to decades of ocean winds and California sun, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Some, however, are a far cry from a stereotypical 'mobile home,' equipped with designer furniture, high-end appliances...

FORT WORTH, Texas — Catherine DeLeon is rallying around her neighbors as they try to figure out how to make ends meet. Their new challenge comes because rent at their mobile home park in Fort Worth is jumping by hundreds of dollars. 

DeLeon lives at the K-Mar Mobile Home Park on the city's southeast side. It's something she never expected to deal with even after winning her battle against stage 4 cancer.

"We're all older. I'm 65 this year, and so there are other people that are older than that," DeLeon said. "You don't expect to have this kind of stress in your life." 

DeLeon is surrounded by neighbors who are all struggling with...

Residents of an oceanfront mobile-home park in South Florida rejected a $503 million buyout offer from The Kolter Group. 

Nestled between some of the country’s most expensive ZIP codes, the Briny Breezes community spans 43 acres, housing 488 mobile trailers on a barrier island in Palm Beach County. Structured somewhat like a co-op, each homeowner owns between 20 and 80 shares in the Briny Breezes township.

The proposal — which totaled $502,496,000 — averaged out to just over $1 million per owner, but residents deemed it too low and rejected the bid last Thursday, the Coastal Star first reported.

Kolter executives “thought they were going...

It’s no surprise that the listing for 247 Paradise Cove Road, a three-bedroom property currently on the market for $5.85 million, opens with a description of the views. “This open-concept home is located on one of Paradise Coves’ most desirable streets, offering stunning ocean views and ultraclose proximity to direct beach access,” the Zillow page reads. Of course, this makes sense given the home itself isn’t a mansion, a villa, or even an architectural gem—it’s a trailer. 

Located within Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, the Malibu house’s neighborhood is widely considered the priciest trailer park in the country. The home at 247 Paradise...

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Residents at a northeast Fresno mobile home park have been given notice that they have one year to sell or move their trailers out of the La Hacienda Mobile Estates, formerly known as Trails End Mobile Home Park.

Now, tenants are worried they'll have nowhere to go and will end up homeless.

"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.

Wright is worried about where she's going to live this time next year.

About a week ago, she received a letter from the La Hacienda Mobile Estates saying the company was terminating the tenancy to...

After more than three years of planning, persistence, manual labor and financial investment in a dream that would not die, affordable housing activist Glen Gibellina wants the world to know about his shipping container home.

Looking at it, you wouldn’t know that the attractive split-level home started out as three shipping containers manufactured in China.

Gibellina bought two 40-by-8-foot containers for $5,000 each and a 20-by-8 container for $3,800 and picked them up at the Port of Tampa.

They are “one-trippers,” containers that were used to transport products only once. They make a better tiny home because they haven’t been through the...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) - State leaders are exploring options for homeless Vermonters who may lose their emergency housing this summer.

With no more federal funding available to pay for emergency hotel rooms, the proposed state budget includes funding until the end of June, when the eligibility criteria will change. Housing advocates are worried about a looming wave of people being kicked out on the street.

Lawmakers in the House Humans Services Committee earlier in the session floated a plan to house Vermonters in vacant mobile homes and Governor Phil Scott says the idea has merit.

“There are a number of lots in some of the mobile home...

Recreational vehicles are a common feature in mobile home parks in Baldwin County, despite not being allowed under the county subdivision regulations.

That’s the argument that Steve Huffaker, who owns Pine Grove Estates, a mobile home park outside of Bay Minette, is making. Huffaker has had his park for 30 years and decided that he wanted to add a few spots for recreational vehicles in his park, for construction workers hired to work on the new Novelis aluminum recycling and rolling plant being built in the area.

“With the new aluminum plant coming in, I wanted to create RV spots for people to park their RVs,” Huffaker said. “These aren’t...

The wildfire had already burned 160 square miles of northern New Mexico forest last spring when it suddenly surged ahead, reducing to ash the cozy cabin David Martinez had built for himself more than two decades earlier.

Martinez, now 64, had fled days before, one of 15,000 people ordered to leave as the fire spread.

He spent the next three months sleeping near the edge of the fire in his pickup truck, his physical and mental health declining from the smoke, stress and lack of sleep. 

Desperate for shelter, he spent $5,000 or so of the emergency aid he’d received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a down payment for a...

Carson will create a mobile home park overlay district, adding an extra layer of protection to preserve what some residents have called their last bastion of affordable housing options.

The City Council approved the overlay district this week.

Essentially, only mobile home parks will be allowed in that district. If property owners within that area want to redevelop a piece of land on which a mobile home park sits, they will have to apply for and receive a zoning change from the city, and provide a comparable number of affordable housing units for the residents there.

There are currently 21 mobile home parks in Carson. They “constitute a...

Mobile home renters who were watching legislation in Sacramento meant to enact some rent control will have to continue waiting before they see relief — at least coming from the statehouse.

From Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, is legislation that would cap mobile home space rents from increasing more than 3% plus the percentage of change in cost of living, or 5% annually, whichever is lower. It would not preempt any local ordinance that may offer even stronger protections for renters, Muratsuchi said.

The idea behind the bill is to protect lower-income and seniors on fixed incomes from losing their mobile homes as rents across...

When they finally got to the vote on the newest proposal for the seven-acre central area of Falcon Pointe – a housing development on the city’s north side that didn’t turn out as originally planned – East Lansing’s Planning Commission voted 4-0 to recommend the proposal to City Council. The latest proposal, to construct four three-unit rental dwellings fits East Lansing’s zoning law, and the commission is supposed to adhere closely to that question in their deliberations.

But the vote to recommend the proposal didn’t come without planning commissioners hearing from and responding sympathetically to present residents of the community about...

During the pandemic, many people took on home improvement projects while stuck inside. Now, some of those DIY skills might be coming in handy.

In general, renovations are taking 259 percent longer than they did in 2019, up from 22 days then to 79 days now, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Along with that, the costs of labor and materials have risen, and high demand has led to long wait times for construction to even start. As such, some go-getters have decided to take on the work themselves—to varying degrees of success.

“I think that going into this, we had the perception that we were very good DIYers,” Evan Moody told the WSJ. He...

On Wednesday night, city council defeated a proposed rezoning bylaw to facilitate the development of a modular home park on Twinberry Drive in the Hart.

Westcan Property Ltd. was seeking to rezone 11 hectares (27 acres) of the 52.4 ha. property at 9153 Twinberry Dr. to facilitate a new modular home park. Under the proposed zoning, a maximum of 220 mobile homes would be allowed on the 11 ha. area.

City council approved the first two readings of the rezoning on March 27, but rejected third reading of the bylaw on Wednesday. City council received 18 letters and emails from area residents opposed to the proposed development, one raising...

RV sales have slowed and fewer people are buying RVs than has been the recent trend. Has that changed campground crowding? Is it easier to find a campsite now, particularly in state and national parks? Campgrounds are changing and evolving, some for the better and some for the worse. RV Travel readers discuss their experiences and offer a few tips to help other campers find that perfect spot.

Here are a few observations from our readers.

Mariane B. sees full-time RVers at fault for crowding. She explains, “Camping used to be something you did on vacation or a long weekend, not year around with all the amenities...

The Catawba County Board of Commissioners unanimously rejected a rezoning request for a manufactured home park during their meeting Monday.

Skadoosh Properties asked the commissioners to rezone 31 acres at the end of Bush Drive near Conover from R-40 Residential to Manufactured Home Park for the purpose of building up to 74 manufactured homes at the site.

The Catawba County Planning Board was unanimously against the proposal for rezoning. They cited concerns about the septic system, runoff from the project and the ability of emergency services to respond effectively given the number of homes and the fact there is only one road...

A north Fresno mobile home park is set to close within 12 months, with several residents receiving new eviction notices last week.

Harmony Communities sent the notice to several renters demanding they leave the park within the next year. Some residents did not receive the new notice because they are already fighting the landlord on existing eviction notices.

The notice reads: “La Hacienda Mobile Estates, LLC … is exercising its right to terminate your tenancy for the purpose of permanently closing the Park.”

“We all knew it was coming. It was just a matter of time,” said a resident on Monday who did not want her name published.

Rumors...

EDWARDS – When Elizabeth Velasco first moved to Colorado from San Francisco del Rincón, Mexico, she was a teenager living in a series of aging mobile home parks in Eagle County – near the tony ski resorts of Vail and Beaver Creek, but also very far removed.

As a 15-year-old, Velasco says she was definitely aware of water-quality issues that have plagued mobile home parks in the mountains for decades. But as a 34-year-old political newcomer working to unseat an incumbent Republican last year, Velasco became acutely focused on “secondary” water-quality issues such as odor, taste and high mineral content.

“Here in New Castle, in Garfield...

Anyone interested in moving to this millionaire- mobile home-filled beach retreat are in luck.

Indeed, an exclusive Malibu, California neighborhood — which is actually a trailer park — currently has two live listings within its high-priced, celebrity-filled grounds. 

Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park may not sound like an elite, star-studded locale — but recent years have been boom time for the once-blue collar community, and today it’s considered to be America’s priciest trailer park. 

“You’ve got to have a lot of cash to be buying in there these days,” Coldwell Banker Realty agent Brian Merrick told the Wall Street Journal. “The ones that...

Several residents of a Benton mobile home park are facing homelessness after the city purchased the land on which their trailers sit.

Residents of the Sunset Lake Mobile Home Park received a notice on March 7 notifying them the “landlord is terminating this lease and your tenancy in 30 days.” 

Sunset Lake Park resident Daniel Howard is one of about 100 residents who were told they had to leave the mobile home park.

Howard had lived in the mobile home park for 11 years. 

“I went from being a homeowner, to being homeless, that quick,” he said.

Howard said his only income he receives is from disability and social security. In...

PORTLAND, Ore. — When Gadiel Galvez learned that the owner of his mobile home park south of Seattle was looking to sell, he and other residents worried their largely Latino community would be bulldozed to make way for another Amazon warehouse.

So, they decided to form a cooperative and buy their park in Lakewood, Washington. With help from a nonprofit that advises communities like theirs and helps them secure loans, they bought it for $5.25 million in September.

"Everybody thought, 'You know what? … I'm going to make this place the best that I can,'" said Galvez, 22, who is a co-op board member. "Some people painted their homes, some...

MIDWAY — More than 35 families and individuals living in a long-established mobile home park in Midway will have to find a new place to live in the coming months because the park is preparing to close next year.

Tenants of Shoaf’s Country Estates off of Norman Shoaf Road in northern Davidson County were notified in March that the mobile home park will close in 2024, and they have to make arrangements to have their homes moved.

Lindley White, manager of Shoaf’s Country Estates, said that the decision to close the park was not made easily. White is married to Liz Shoaf White, who is a co-owner with her brother, Todd Shoaf.

“We had to come...

When Gadiel Galvez learned that the owner of his mobile home park south of Seattle was looking to sell, he and other residents worried their largely Latino community would be bulldozed to make way for another Amazon warehouse.

So, they decided to form a cooperative and buy their park in Lakewood, Washington. With help from a nonprofit that advises communities like theirs and helps them secure loans, they bought it for $5.25 million. Since becoming owners in September, everyone’s worked to make improvements.

“Everybody thought, ‘You know what? … I’m going to make this place the best that I can,'” said Galvez, 22, who is a co-op board...

THE RECENT op-ed by state Sen. Kevin Avard relative to gutting the balanced make-up of the New Hampshire Board of Manufactured Housing and expanding its jurisdiction missed the target.

SB 203 guts the membership of the board of manufactured housing and places the burden of resolving resident conflicts in resident-owned communities on the state. It allows the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund (the lender) to nominate a resident to the board; removes the member of the N.H. Bar Association and replaces it with a housing advocacy member; and it removes legislative participation on the board. This does not create a balanced board in our view.