Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Homeowners in Florida are being quietly priced out of their communities. People often own their manufactured homes but rent the lot underneath them.

Census data shows lot rent in the state has nearly doubled over the last decade. That means manufactured housing parks, which are considered the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing, are now growing unaffordable.

Under Florida law, management can pass along fees, like utility charges and property tax increases, as long as they are considered “reasonable” and are mentioned in a park’s original governing document, which is called a prospectus.

WUSF spoke with various homeowners who...

The City of Mitchell netted just $2 in a recent auction of trailers located in its city-owned mobile home park near Hitchcock Park. Held on Wednesday, the auction offered three trailers and one building, but drew only two bidders. Two trailers sold for $1 each, while the remaining trailer and house received no bids and are slated for demolition.

The city of Mitchell made just $2 at an auction for trailers in its city-owned mobile home park near Hitchcock Park. The Wednesday auction offered three trailers and one building, with only two bidders participating. Two trailers sold for $1 each, while one trailer and a house received no bids and...

A hearing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Pines Trailer Park homeowners association against the park owner was pushed to late August.

Originally set for July 28, the hearing was rescheduled for Aug. 29 before 12th Judicial Circuit Judge Edward Nichols via Zoom.

According to court documents, the park owners’ attorney, Pines Park Investors LLC, Shawn Arbeiter, requested the delay. A reason was not stated for the scheduling change.

The homeowners association at the trailer park, 103 Church Ave., filed a lawsuit March 28 against PPI, a corporation managed by developer Shawn Kaleta. The HOA alleges a series of violations related to an...

The current owners of Mountain Valley Mobile Home Park and Aspen-Basalt Mobile Home Park on Monday, July 28, accepted an offer from the residents of those parks to purchase the communities for $42 million. 

The two communities have been working towards converting their respective mobile home parks into “Resident-Owned Communities,” or ROCs. An ROC functions similarly to a mortgage on a standard house; however, instead of one person paying their mortgage monthly, the entire community pays it down as rent. 

The communities have been working with Thistle, a Boulder-based non-profit that manages various affordable housing schemes in Boulder,...

Rising lot rents are pricing Floridians out of manufactured home parks, according to a new report from WUSF.

Why it matters: Manufactured home parks are "a crucial source of unsubsidized affordable housing for vulnerable individuals," the report says.

• Residents are often older, retired adults on fixed incomes.

How it works: Manufactured homes, also known as mobile homes, are generally much cheaper than single-family homes built on site.

• Residents typically buy their own homes and pay rent for the land underneath.

State of play: From 2015 to 2023, Florida's median lot rent has almost doubled, per WUSF, citing Census Bureau...

LAKE PLACID — Residents of the Cascade Acres mobile home park are attempting a last-ditch effort to keep a private equity firm from buying the park land that their 124 manufactured homes sit on, over concerns that a new owner could lead to lot rent increases.

A rumor has sprung up that the buyer plans to replace the mobile homes with condos. This is not substantiated, though, and owners of the company say they have no such plans.

Cascade Acres is currently owned by M.H. Communities Ltd., a mobile home park owner based in Nashua, New Hampshire. In March, residents learned of plans to sell the park to the private equity firm Crown...

Across the country, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) such as IFF are changing lives. These specialized financial organizations support nonprofits, small businesses, and individuals in low-income areas who may have difficulty accessing traditional banking services. Their aim is to promote economic development, affordable housing, and community growth – and that is exactly how IFF is helping Detroit Phoenix Center (DPC), and Family Promise of West Michigan. 

"By investing into our organization, they're also investing into the community, and hundreds of young people, potentially thousands, are going to be served," says...

Almost 7,000 seniors populate housing authority waitlists for affordable senior housing in Santa Barbara County.

“In the face of such high demand, the preservation of existing affordable housing, including mobile home parks, is clearly important,” county planner Lila Spring said at the July 15 Board of Supervisors meeting. “However, the county lacks regulations to prevent the conversion of senior mobile home parks.”

But by the end of the meeting, that was no longer the case. 

Supervisors passed zoning ordinance amendments to preserve existing mobile home parks in the unincorporated areas of the county and prevent the conversion of senior...

SPRINGFIELD — The rents at a mobile home community in Ludlow will return to previous, lower rates until the town’s Rent Control Board follows procedure, a judge has ruled.

Judge Jonathan J. Kane ordered on July 10 that monthly rents — which residents pay to live on their lots at the West Street Village Mobile Home Community — will return to $207, a rate that they were paying in 2023.

(ABC 6 News) — If you live in a mobile home, a new study says your drinking water may be unsafe.

The Associated Press reports 68% of mobile home parks that run their own water systems violated safe drinking water rules in the last five years.

For comparison, city water systems come in 20 points lower at 48%. More alarmingly, many parks go completely unregulated.

The study comes after EPA research into a cancer cluster in California traced back to high arsenic levels.

Nationwide, nearly 17 million Americans live in mobile homes.

The Fortuna City Council has agreed to discuss rent stabilization for manufactured home parks, after hearing pleas from seniors who say they are being priced out of Royal Crest Mobile Estates. The council, earlier this week, unanimously voted to discuss park rent stabilization in a future meeting.

City Manager Amy Nilsen said during the meeting there are steps and meetings needed before voting on a completed ordinance — the timing of the next session to workshop the idea depends on the hiring of an attorney experienced on the topic. She said a discussion could possibly be held in the second council meeting of August at the earliest, but...

This story is part of a series on manufactured housing and solutions to help mitigate threats facing mobile home residents. Read our previous pieces on the health impacts of private equity ownership and historic preservationists’ role in protecting these communities.

Marjory Gilsrud and Yvonne Maldonado have never met. They live in separate manufactured home communities, more than a thousand miles apart from each other. But both women, as leaders in the tenant associations at their respective parks, are fighting the same threat as they work to preserve one of the last bastions of affordable homeownership.

Home to some 22 million...

obile home parks have long been one of the last bastions of affordable housing in America. For millions of residents, they offer the dream of homeownership at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing.

But that dream comes with a catch: Residents typically own the structure, but not the land beneath it. That legal distinction leaves them vulnerable. Despite being homeowners, they can still be evicted under landlord-tenant laws, sometimes for falling just a few hundred dollars behind on rent.

This vulnerability hasn’t gone unnoticed. As real estate investors increasingly buy up mobile home parks, evictions are rising. In Florida,...

BROOKVILLE — The Crestwood Mobile Home Trailer Park in Brookville has been sold to Allegheny Estates, and the new owners are working on completing improvements and maintenance to the property.

Brookville borough manager Dana Rooney said Allegheny Estates owns another trailer court in Brookville and the borough has a good relationship with the owners, Matt and Marci Steinman. She said the sale does not currently change ongoing lawsuit between the previous owner of Crestwood, Robert Joseph, and the Brookville Municipal Authority, which is still ongoing.

“We are looking forward to working with the new owners. Working with them will...

There exists an almost absurdly simple fix that could help ease the housing crisis. It would cost the government nothing, require deleting just five words from a 50-year-old federal law, and has enjoyed quiet support from housing researchers and leaders for decades.

The target is an obscure regulation that requires every manufactured home to be built on a “permanent chassis” — a steel trailer frame that can attach to wheels. The idea was that the chassis was necessary — even after the home was installed and the wheels taken off — because manufactured houses, which trace their roots to World War II trailers, could theoretically...

This op-ed is part of a series on manufactured housing and solutions to help mitigate threats facing mobile home residents. Read our first story on health impacts of private equity ownership.

Punctuating the country is an unknown world of mobile home parks that are often seen but rarely recognized. These communities are everywhere: scattered along highways, in urban crannies in California, Florida, and the Sunbelt, on exurban territory from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest, next to factories, farmland, mines and military bases. Blink and you’ll miss them. The National Register of Historic Places certainly has.

There is not a single...

Last week, when mobile home park residents in Capitola announced their intention to thwart the county transportation authority’s effort to survey sections of their lots, it marked the latest escalation in a dispute between the mobile home park’s owner, residents and the government over who has the rights to swaths of land occupied by residents but technically owned by the government and needed for the Coastal Rail Trail project. 

Yet, with the weekend came deescalation, and residents announced Monday that they would relent and allow the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to survey the mobile home lots that encroach onto...

The Columbia City Council approved the annexation of Woodstock Mobile Home Park into city limits, which requires many residents to establish a sewer connection with the city. Woodstock is expected to foot the bill.

Half of the 208 mobile homes on the property are already hooked up to the city’s sewer system. The others are serviced by two on-site sewage treatment facilities that are noncompliant with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ standards, according to a city staff report to the council.

“Had the existing on-site package treatment facilities been compliant with DNR requirements, the park would have been capable of...

Michigan has the second-most manufactured home parks owned by private equity in the nation, according to research from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and Manufactured Housing Action.

The state has 192 parks, accounting for 50,626 home sites, owned by private equity firms and hedge funds.

Only Florida has a higher share, with 269 parks made up of 64,354 home sites. Texas trails Michigan, with 148 parks with 31,265 home sites.

The research shows a disproportionate share of private equity-owned manufactured housing, with firms owning more than one in every four manufactured homes in the state.

This marks a slight increase from 2020...

Tucson needs more housing. There are upward of 2,000 people living on the streets and in emergency shelters. At the same time, the city is expected to see nearly 50,000 new residents over the next decade, and will need to produce more than 62,000 housing units to meet housing needs. 

Amid those complicated needs, the department of Housing and Community Development is at the forefront of creating a housing safety net for Tucsonans — doing everything from dispersing federal dollars for public housing to buying properties to eventually increase the stock of affordable housing. 

For nearly a year and a half, Ann Chanecka has been the director...

Housing is the solution to many of Maine’s crises, but it’s a challenge to build, rent or buy affordably.

This year, Maine took decisive, positive action. Thanks to the leadership of the Legislature and Gov. Janet Mills, several bold new policies the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition (MAHC) prioritized were signed into law. They remove barriers to housing development, unlock critical investments and help Maine people — young workers, older adults, families and essential employees — live where they work and put down roots in the towns they love.

For the first time ever, Maine’s state budget includes a dedicated, ongoing revenue stream to...

Three women sitting around a kitchen table in Great Falls didn’t know each other before a shared predicament brought them together.

"What was that nickname they gave us … the three little ladies from Great Falls, or three nice ladies, or something," Vivian Rambo asks.

Rambo is reminiscing with Cindy Newman and Jan Bailey about their road trips to the Montana Legislature last winter. The women are all retired and in their 70s. They’re also manufactured homeowners living on rented lots, and they want more legal protection.

The company that owns Newman’s park increased rents for new tenants from $288 per month to $825 per month after buying...

While Verde Valley Habitat for Humanity is perhaps best known for building homes, it also works to keep people in their homes.

“That’s where our Critical Home Repair Program comes in. We build ramps so a veteran in a wheelchair can get to his front door,” VVHFH wrote June 14 on Facebook. “We install grab bars so a widow can shower without fear of falling. We fix dangerous wiring and replace crumbling flooring. We show up — because safety and dignity shouldn’t depend on a fixed income.”

In collaboration with the city of Sedona, VVHFH has $400,000 earmarked for home repairs to assist low- to moderate-income homeowners within the city limits...

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and Manufactured Housing Action (MHAction) have released an update to the Private Equity Manufactured Housing Tracker, a groundbreaking tool monitoring private equity and hedge fund ownership of manufactured housing communities in the U.S. 

Manufactured housing is a vital source of affordable housing for the over 21 million Americans who live in them, many of whom are on fixed incomes. Since the early 2000s, institutional investors such as private equity firms have increased their presence in the manufactured housing market. In 2020 and 2021, they accounted for 23% of all manufactured home...

SANFORD (WGME) – More mobile home parks are raising rents on residents, and one state representative says it’s retaliation for the work lawmakers did to try and protect people from major rent increases.

“I wasn't surprised that it was $75, because that's what it was last year,” Leigh Wood, who lives at Marsh Brook Estates mobile home park in Sanford, said.

“This April it went up to $475, and starting in September it's going to be going up to $600,” Jeffrey Sirois, who lives at Oak Hill Park, a mobile home park in Sabattus, said.

Marsh Brook Estates and Oak Hill are two of the latest mobile home parks to raise the lot rent on residents. In...