Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Energy Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit, runs a manufactured home replacement program that provides funding to replace homes built prior to 1995 with new builds. The program provides eligible applicants up to $16,000 to help pay for a new single or double-wide mobile home, and connects them with other agencies that can provide funding to pay for the replacement. Energy Trust also provides a program navigator to help applicants throughout the process.

Yeah, this is the same concept from last week, in which they want to encourage Oregonians to spend $80,000 on a new mobile home, get a $16,000 rebate, and end up with a $64,000 debt load simply to do what you could accomplish by adding a single $500 window air conditioner.

What a bunch of idiots.

EINSTEIN STUPIDITY SCORE: 10

The rent bump, according to city officials, will go right back to the community.“This would mean lot maintenance, stormwater, water, sewage, everything that you know this mobile home park essentially has to keep up with. That $25 rent increase would be able to provide extra revenue of about $12,000. That is essentially what that will cover,” said Destiny Wiggins, public safety spokesperson for the city of DeLand. 

Hmm. That’s the narrative all park owners use when the rent goes up, but when the “evil landlord” says it the media says it’s a bunch of crap but when a government agency says it it’s suddenly utter genius and there’s zero pushback.

What a bunch of hypocritical nonsense.

EINSTEIN STUPIDITY SCORE: 8

Although his rent has increased 20% during his time at the park, he considers himself one of the lucky homeowners. Since 2020, he said, rents for residents newly moved in have risen from $1,250 to $2,050 per month—a nearly 65% increase.

This is the latest craze – mobile home park residents complaining to the media how the rents are too high for new people who have not even moved in yet. This absurd virtue signaling is as dumb as some guy at the hotel front desk complaining that the person in the next room is paying too much because they didn’t use Hotels.com. In the “free market” the whole point is that you have the freedom to do what you want. If someone wants to pay $2,050 per month lot rent to live in this park, then how is it any of this guy’s business? And if the rent is too high, the owner won’t be able to attract tenants and will have to lower it. It’s called the “free market” system and that’s the foundation of capitalism.

What a bunch of lunacy.

EINSTEIN STUPIDITY SCORE: 10

Galey’s fear is that her lot rent, currently $1,322 a month, could increase with a new owner…

Yes, it absolutely will – even if the tenants buy the park. When you load millions of dollars of debt on the property, that new mortgage payment will be a whopper and the lot rent may have to go up 50% or more (based on how ridiculously low mom and pop’s rents are) just to cover that. You may remember last week when the non-profit told the tenants that the rent would go up like 50% or more day one to cover their note payment. And even then, there’ no guarantee that their non-profit deal will last more than a few years. Funny how anyone in Colorado would not be aware of the 4-park foreclosure on ROC in nearby Canon City. I’m sure those tenants thought it was great that the non-profit was buying their park. Wrong.

A non-profit buying the park is hardly the great solution they pretend it is. In fact, the tenants fare better with a regular owner in both lot rent levels and stability.

EINSTEIN STUPIDITY SCORE: 10

The County gave Sisco four options to become compliant:1) Elevate and repair her home 2) Replace her home with an elevated one 3) Move her home to a location outside of the flood hazard area 4) Move to a new home and remove her damaged home from the property.

When you give someone who has zero money these four options, you are basically telling them to get the heck out of there. This is just another case of a city or county trying to remove all the mobile homes out of their boundary. This is why no new mobile home parks will ever be built in the U.S. : no city or county will ever issue such a permit. They basically just hate all mobile homes and mobile home parks.

If this had been a stick-built home they would have not said a word and let them do whatever they wanted.

EINSTEIN STUPIDITY SCORE: 10

I know nothing about this park or town, but I do know there’s this website called Bestplaces.net and it tells me that Taunton, MA has the following housing stats (see for yourself):

• Single-family home average of $443,200
• Average 3-bedroom apartment rent of $2.090 per month

That presents a bit of a logic problem when the AG is furious because lot rents went from $302 to $535 per month. That’s absurdly low. That’s 75% less than apartments. But the AG is focused only on one stat: a 56% jump. Well, here’s a thought: the McChicken sandwich at McDonalds went up 300% -- from $1 to $3 – over the past couple of years. Those capitalist bastards!

“Because rents are rising, and there’s nothing justifying them. And that’s what I’m hearing from folks in other parks too. If landlords want to keep their residents happy, then keep it affordable. Get rid of corporate greed.”

These folks in Maine need to move over to New York City where Mamdani will give them the socialist dream they’ve always craved apparently.

“If me and my children or my grandchildren are in my house, that tree falls and it kills us. What’s my house insurance got to do with you killing us because you don’t want to do your job because it’s taking money out of your pocket?” Mosley said.

In the photo for this article, it clearly shows a very green and healthy tree above this mobile home. The owner of the park has zero reason to cut it down. Using the old “well, it might fall some day and kill me” argument is as goofy as the park owner using the “a meteor might fall and hit your home some day so you need to move out now” argument. 

“We can’t really, really breathe until that final ‘t’ is crossed and ‘i’ is dotted,” Fitzgerald said, “but we’re in the right direction.”

OK, the tenants have the park under contract. That’s meaningless. There’s nothing to brag about until the deal is closed. The tenants still have to raise the down payment money and find a loan (and a guarantor non-profit for that loan). Let’s see how it all turns out before anyone buys the screw-top champaign at the convenience store.

Of course, the park owner is going to tear down the park and put something more profitable on the land if they declare rent control for his park. What idiot would imagine differently? These bureaucrats just don’t understand the concept of private property rights and economics.

Energy Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit, runs a manufactured home replacement program that provides funding to replace homes built prior to 1995 with new builds. 

The program provides eligible applicants up to $16,000 to help pay for a new single or double-wide mobile home, and connects them with other agencies that can provide funding to pay for the replacement. Energy Trust also provides a program navigator to help applicants throughout the process. 

So let me get this straight. If you have a mobile home built before 1995 this non-profit may give you up to $16,000 towards buying a new mobile home (retail cost $80,000 or so) so you can save $100 a month on your utility bills. Makes sense, right? You spend $64,000 to save $1,200 per year. Brrilliant.

Is that maybe the dumbest concept of 2025? Nah, there’s still 4½ months to go this year.

In doing so they joined a growing movement of mobile home park residents who have formed cooperatives to collectively purchase their parks. In effect, it’s a national effort by working-class families to wrest their fate away from the hyper-commodification of real estate markets, but its tenor runs pragmatic, stoic and understated. Residents talk more about securing low interest rates and stable rents than breaking the shackles of financialized capitalism. Nonetheless, these mobile home residents are organizing a collective exit from the caprices of the speculative real estate economy.

What else would you expect from an on-line news group that have Zohran Mamdani (the socialist candidate for New York Mayor) as their cover photo with a glowing article about how great he is?

These are the two parks that a non-profit is buying for $42 million, MAYBE. They have promises of contributions from various non-profit groups (yet to be collected). They have a due diligence period which will take 45 days and the non-profit is already floating the concept that the deal could die if anything pops up with the infrastructure or other large cap-x project. Then they have to get the bank to sign off on it all. So really all that’s happened is they got PLEDGES of $20 million. Let’s see if this deal really closes. I’m not holding my breath.

Yes, this is the same idiotic story of the nutty tenants that won’t move out – despite eviction notices – and the judge is too chicken to tell them to leave. One way or the other, this park is being demolished for re-development and all these antics are simply delaying the inevitable.

And, of course and as always, another park bites the dust.

In 1997, the residents formed a group called the Park Acquisition Corporation (PAC) to try to buy the land, but somehow the city, which co-signed the loan, ended up as the only name on the documents. For more than 20 years, resident Gloria Gilbert's monthly payment has gone toward buying property for the city.  But she, like a lot of residents, thought they would eventually own the land.

For years now I have been tying to educate people that in the “tenant-owned community” model the “tenants” don’t actually own the property – the non-profits do. In this case, the “non-profit” happened to be the city that guaranteed the loan and now they say the property is theirs and they want $26 million for it or they’re going to sell if for potential redevelopment.

Pretty much ALL of the “tenant-owned” deals have these bizarre, flaky constructions and are simply a time delay for re-sale to private owners or developers.

"From the beginning, we have contested that DOLA's Notice of Violation was an unsupported overreach by the State, and more importantly, was not in the best interest of our community and its residents. We are grateful the judge ruled in our favor and overturned the Notice of Violation in full.  Ultimately, our goal is to provide a safe and clean community that our residents are proud to call home."

The judge figured out that when you have two free parking spots per lot – and roads are not wide enough for emergency vehicles if there’s on-street parking – the landlord can’t really be criticized as being “evil”. Hooray for common sense.

"We’re trying to grow, we’re trying to make an impact, a positive impact, but having business is very difficult, doing business is very difficult especially in this space," he stated. "The cost of doing business is overwhelming."

Once again, Oregon’s rent control did not have the intended consequences. Maybe people should have studied the damage that rent control does before they enacted it – it’s right there on the internet for all to see.

New state laws in Maine, aimed at protecting mobile home park residents from high rent increases, are now having the opposite effect. A state lawmaker says they're seeing unusually high rent increases at as many as one third of Maine's mobile home parks …

Can bureaucrats in Maine really be this stupid? What did they think would happen? Reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan quote that “the nine most dangerous words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

Collectively, contributing entities have raised $14 million of an initial goal of $20 million…

When you’re $6 million short and the clock is about to run out, it’s easy to pledge an extra $100,000 since you’re never going to have to actually pay any of it. But it’s a great way to get free “virtue signaling” PR, right?

The more than eight million manufactured homes in the US that sit on borrowed land are facing rent increases and displacement pressures from owners looking to sell mainly to private equity buyers.

Could you jam more untruths into a single sentence? Let’s break it down:

1. There are NOT 8 million mobile homes in American mobile home parks. There are 44,000 parks with an average of maybe 80 units per park which only equals 3.5 million lots. At 80% occupancy, that’s around 3 million homes. The statistic this writer used is ALL mobile homes in the U.S. with the majority of those on private land and NOT in mobile home parks. He didn’t do his homework.
2. The land in a mobile home park is not “borrowed”. It is owned by the title holder to the property and the homes are there via a lease with the tenant paying rent.
3. All of America is facing price increases in every good and service, and mobile home park lot rents are not anywhere near the top of that list, based on actual dollar amount.
4. Park owners have no interest in “displacing” any tenant as all they seek is timely, monthly payment of rent. They want nothing to do with “churning” tenants. Every time a tenant leaves it costs them around $5,000 in legal, renovation and opportunity costs.
5. Sellers sell to the highest bidder. At least 50%+ of mobile home parks are not large enough to even interest private equity groups. Of the balance, buyers range from individuals to partnerships, to private equity groups – and even the tenants in certain cases. Who cares?

So what was the writer angling for? Why not just tell it like it is? Why lie to everybody? I’m betting you can guess why…

“That involves holding our residents accountable for their home conditions,” Booker said. “If someone doesn’t have the desire to improve their home, it’s not the best place for them to live. … Unfortunately, some residents, we’re asking them to sell their home.”

Isn’t this really what all these articles are about? In passing the baton from the old mom and pop owners to the new ones that have brand new and giant mortgages to pay and need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on capital repairs – the whole concept of bringing old broken things back to life – there are always a few tenants that don’t like living in a modern world. Even a few early employees of Apple Computer quit in protest when Steve Jobs moved the office from his dad’s garage to a real office building. Let’s all just admit that there is a tiny sliver of tenants in many mobile home parks that are not willing or able to pay market rents or maintain their property and need to move on to someplace they can afford or has lower standards. These are the folks that the media coddles and interviews – never the 99% of happy customers. So stop trying to make this simple fact of life some “evil plan” by the new landlord. The new landlord is committed to helping the 99% of tenants that CAN afford to pay a modern rent and DO want to elevate the qualify of life in the park. Society is based on what’s best for the majority – that’s the underpinning of democracy.

And another park bites the dust.

Now THIS is an interesting story. The city owns the mobile home park and the tenants want to buy it (sound familiar?). Yet the city is trying to stick it to them on the price:

The residents are offering $20 million. "The city flatly rejected that and came back with an ultimatum of $26 million, no negotiating.," said Hansen.

Looks like cities only enjoy the concept of “tenant-owned” communities when it’s not their pocketbook that’s being impacted. Kind of hypocritical, huh?

So the tenants are going to pay $26 million for a 98-space park in which they currently pay $1,000 per month lot rent. Here’s what my calculator tells me: 1) that’s $265,306 per space 2) to cover the mortgage, the lot rent would have to increase to over $2,000 per month. Even the folks at the non-profit that promotes these transactions admit it’s dubious:

Tim Townsend, ROC program director with Boulder-based Thistle Community Housing, said that he’s met with Cavern Springs residents multiple times and remains open to working with them. But without at least $15 million in subsidies, the lot payments would rise more than residents could afford.  

Yet the tenants are going to waste everyone’s time with this absurd concept in conformance with Colorado law. Makes total sense right?

No, 40 families did NOT buy a mobile home park for $4 million. A non-profit bought the park. Those 40 families have no ownership of that property whatsoever and have no vested interest in the land at all. They will never see a penny of profit from it and, when they move out, they get paid zero for their supposed “ownership interest”. Let’s at least get the facts straight.