Mobile Home Park News Briefing

The water issues prompted inquiries from both the Summit County Public Health Department and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, or DOLA, which issued a cease and desist order against the park’s landlord on Jan. 3 that was then enforced by a motion filed by Attorney General Phil Weiser on Jan. 12. 

DOLA told Farmers Korner landlord Lori Cutunilli it received a complaint Dec. 23 that certain residents at the mobile park had been “without running water and/or...

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...

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...

WOODBRIDGE, Calif. — Crews were able to evacuate 175 people from a partially-flooded mobile home park in Woodbridge Sunday.

South San Joaquin County Fire Authority, Lodi Fire Department, Lathrop Manteca Fire District, Manteca Fire Department, Woodbridge Fire District and more were at the Arbor Mobile Home Park on Frontage Road to help evacuate residents and animals.

It was one of many calls that first responders have answered as some people try to leave their homes due to flooding from a barrage of winter storms.

South San Joaquin County Fire Authority said their crews were using hoses to move water away from homes in order to...

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...

ANGLETON — A new manufactured home community will be developed in the city adjacent to the intersection of East Phillips Road and Gifford Road.

All of the homes in Angleton Park Place will require a concrete foundation.

“They’re going to have axles taken out from underneath them and they’re all going to have concrete slabs poured underneath the modular homes,” owner and developer Mike Morgan said.

Concerned citizens attended the Dec. 21 Board of Adjustment meeting to express their perspectives on the development.

The meeting was actually being held to discuss a possible variance for the drainage and utilities of Angleton Park...

This week’s storms in the South that killed at least three people and injured nearly 25 more highlight the dangers of being inside a mobile home or manufactured home during severe weather. Most of the homes destroyed in the storm were manufactured. And at least one of the deaths occurred in a manufactured home.

In fact, of the 104 tornado fatalities in 2021, 23 were in manufactured homes, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center. In 2020, 39 of the 76 tornado deaths that year were in manufactured homes. Through Nov. 30 of this year, more than half of tornado deaths — 13 out of 22 — happened in manufactured homes. That's a lot,...

Residents at the Meadowlark mobile home park in Billings continue to have dirty water, a boil order is in effect, they've had frozen and broken pipes, and the water has been shut down.

And now in the Montana Legislature, lawmakers have proposed bills they hope could help in the long run.

Last month's historic cold snap in Montana brought more problems to this Billings mobile home park.

About 20 pipes broke at the end of the year.

"Biggest thing is just the water shut offs, and, you know, not having water and it being turned off all night. Has caused a lot of stress out here for a lot of people," said Gary Deveraux, a Meadowlark resident.

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...

On the first day of December in 2018, Sharon Parmelee moved into Greenwood Village RV Park with her mobile home. She signed a month-to-month rental agreement and started paying $312 per month in lot rent fees in the park, which is located just outside of Kalispell city limits along U.S. Highway 2.

The mobile home park, which has roughly 85 manufactured homes and RVs in addition to a hotel and cabin accommodations called Greenwood Village Inn and Suites, is home mostly to individuals over the age of 50, many of whom are veterans, senior citizens or people living with disabilities on a fixed income.

About six months after Parmelee moved...

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (WFXR) — More than a dozen tenants at Massie’s Mobile Home Park and Christiansburg-based Southwest Virginia Legal are headed to Montgomery County General District Court on Friday, Jan. 6, for a scheduled hearing against their trailer park’s current owners.

“I’m looking for respect, and for people to be treated like human beings,” said Jacqueline Snyder, a tenant in the lawsuit.

Southwest Virginia legal aid attorney Kristi Murray says this is all happening after filing 13 unlawful exclusion suits. They say their water was cut off back in November after park owners didn’t pay the bill.

“First not being able to take your...

The North Platte city council wrangled for about an hour Tuesday about a zoning permit for a proposed small RV park on South Willow.

Merlin and Kelle Dikeman would like to create eight camping spots at 3501 S. Willow and erect a 40’ x 80’ building that contains a night watchman living quarters. The site is a couple blocks south of Goforth Trailer and Trucking at the corner of Walker and Willow.

The Dikemans said in their application that the building could be used to renovate and store old vehicles. Four of the campers in the outside stalls would be privately owned. The other four spaces would be available to lease.

The Dikemans said the...

COOPER TOWNSHIP MONTOUR COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — Residents of a Montour County mobile home park say they have had it with the ongoing water problems and reached out to the I-Team for help after they claim their concerns were not being addressed by property management.

Eyewitness News spoke with residents who are frustrated, disgusted, and some are downright angry. They say they just want to have clear, clean water once and for all.

“It’s been a frustrating mess and it always goes on. We’re at our wit’s end,” said Robert Hayden, a Pepper Hills Mobile Home Park resident.

Robert Hayden lives at the Pepper Hills Mobile Home Park near Danville. He...

Charlotte Bishop was standing at her kitchen window in January 2019 when she saw water streaming into her yard. A block of ice had clogged the brook that snakes around the mobile home park where she and her husband Rollin live in Brattleboro, Vermont. Ice jams are not uncommon in Vermont, but the heavier rains and earlier winter thaws—both related to climate change—will likely cause more flooding in communities near rivers and streams. Bishop grabbed her keys and rushed outside to move their cars to higher ground. Within minutes, she was wading through knee-high water. 

Bishop lives in Tri-Park Cooperative, Vermont’s largest and...

STARK COUNTY, Ohio — Neighbors in several Northeast Ohio retirement communities are grappling with drastic rent hikes after a company took over properties in Navarre and Elyria. The seniors, many of whom are living on fixed incomes, worry how they’ll afford to stay in their homes.

News 5 stories highlighting the concerns are now being cited by Congress in a demand for answers.

Monday, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown issued a letter to Legacy Communities, LLC about the steep rent hikes at Navarre Village and Twin Lakes. He also sent one to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, better known as Freddie Mac, requesting a review of its...

LORDSBURG — The City Council shot down a zoning variance from Ed Kerr, who was asking the city to allow a 1977 mobile home to be placed in Pyramid Heights after residents who were at the Dec. 28 meeting voiced their opposition to the variance.

“The ordinance itself should prohibit this trailer from coming in,” resident Eddie Parra said. He added that there are already two abandoned trailers that need to be addressed by the city, and questioned a park area that is supposed to be maintained by the City.

“Don’t put us in the position where we have to challenge the fact that we pay taxes. For what? What are we getting in return?” Parra...

WEST SACRAMENTO — During severe storms, utility companies prioritize power for schools hospitals and customers' medical needs, but one local mobile home park's power was out for too long and the equipment necessary to keep some residents alive failed.

Valhalla Mobile Home Park has hundreds of residents, some of whom can't live for more than a few hours without power.

"I had heat in one room of the house so I survived," said Tom Madsen, a resident of the mobile home park.

The community of senior citizens lost power for days.

"There's a lot of people on oxygen CPAP machines and that's what we're worried about. What are they going to do...

A water main break at a Fort Collins mobile home community left several of its residents without water this week, according to the city, the community's manager and a resident.

Residents of the eastern section of North College LLC Manufactured Housing Community — a 55-plus senior community with roughly 320 lots — learned of the main break early Tuesday morning when they were greeted with dry kitchen faucets and shower heads around 7 a.m., according to community resident Patti Rosenfelder.

While Rosenfelder, 69, lives on the unaffected western side of the mobile home community — the largest within Fort Collins city limits — she said she...

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...

ORMOND BEACH, Florida — The problems at Peggy Childress’ mobile home started in May when a tree from the vacant lot next door crashed through their carport, the first damage she or her husband, Mike, could recall in 15 years of living there.

Having the tree removed cost $600, all the money they had in savings. “It wiped us out,” said Childress, 61.

Then Hurricane Ian tore off their roof.

“It was like it was raining inside,” Childress said. Rooms filled with water, then mold.

Childress said she’s gotten estimates of more than $22,000 for repairs, “more than this place is worth.”

As is the case with many owners of manufactured and mobile...

Conditional variance requests to place mobile homes in areas where zoning does not permit are creating a juggling act for Hammond leaders as they try to accommodate land owners and adhere to zoning regulations.

Two more requests for mobile homes to be placed in non-compliant areas were presented this past Tuesday night during a council meeting and were met with mixed results. One was granted, the other denied.

Typically, the council has been favorable to granting the majority of such petitions.

The requests were only the latest that continue to pop up on council and Planning and Zoning agendas, a fact not lost on city council...

Dora Flores pulls into a parking spot in front of her trailer house after picking up her grandchildren from school. The two boys run inside, splashing through a couple of small potholes. Flores takes a look at her home of almost 10 years and feels only concern. By the end of next month, she says, she may not have a home at all. 

Over the last year, Flores and her neighbors at Valley Community, a small trailer park in Yakima on the corner of Fruitvale Boulevard and North 16th Avenue, have faced steep rent increases, a new monthly water usage cap and now have to pay the city for garbage collection themselves. Residents have struggled to...

Finding a site to place an RV or camper at this time of year in Southwest Florida has always been a struggle. Add to that the number of RV and mobile home parks that were decimated by Hurricane Ian and the result is those that remain are packed.

Not so in Bonita Springs.

Gulf Coast Camping Resort right now looks like it’s in the throes of the summer doldrums and not the height of tourist season in Southwest Florida.

Noticeably absent are people tooling around on golf carts, walking dogs, or sitting outside enjoying the pleasant winter weather.

These days there’s only a handful of renters left at the once-bustling RV and mobile home...

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...

• Manufactured Housing REITs snapped an incredible streak of nine straight years of outperformance over the REIT Index in 2022, impacted by headwinds from higher interest rates and hurricane-related disruptions.
• Despite their REIT-leading growth rates, Manufactured Housing ("MH") REITs have historically been among the most interest rate-sensitive sectors due to their counter-cyclical demand profile and remarkable operational consistency.
• While rent growth has moderated from record-high levels across other residential property types, MH revenue growth is poised to accelerate in 2023, driven by their under-appreciated...