OK, it looks like a review of the American political process is needed for those who apparently lack basic common sense. So here goes. Pennsylvania has a Democratic Governor and House but a Republican Senate. A VERY Republican Senate (28 red to 22 blue). There should be ZERO chance that a Republican Senate would pass a radical leftist bill for rent control that is simply designed to give Josh Shapiro a talking point for his run for President in 2028. And falsely claiming that park owners are raising lot rents 50% per year (the real number is closer to 5% statewide) is NOT going to convince Republican folks to give Shapiro what he wants. While Democrats seemingly defied gravity in the 2020 election cycle, now that Covid is over and elections are based on real ballots again, the general rule that Republicans don’t vote for socialist agendas is back in force.

The fact that 1980s mobile homes that sold for $3 million are now crashing in value should come as no surprise to anyone with the intelligence of a ballpoint pen. 

I hate to spoil this woke sermon, but the fact is that the average single-family home in Bellingham costs $606,000. As a result, the prices at this mobile home park are ridiculously cheap. End of story.

Pacific Palisades has only issued 161 new building permits since the devastating fire burned down around 5,500 homes. Maybe they should focus on issuing permits instead of issuing new red tape?

The end of Lil’ Abner is part of a troubling pattern emerging in Miami-Dade County and beyond. Since 2011, approximately 183 mobile home parks have closed in Florida, according to Florida Mobile Home Relocation Corporation and the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. From a development perspective, these parks represent ideal investments. They are relatively cheap to buy and prime locations for multifamily units or commercial projects. For residents, however, it’s their worst nightmare come true when their community gets sold.

Yeah, I know it’s another story about Lil’ Abner but just wanted to point out that this reporter has finally figured out what I’ve been talking about for years now: mobile home parks make for ideal redevelopment parcels. That’s why rent control simply leads to parks being built into better uses. If 183 parks have been torn down in Florida alone since 2011 – and Florida does NOT have rent control – you can imagine the future of New York, Washington and Oregon mobile home parks since those states have recently passed idiotic rent control laws. There will probably be over 1,000 parks torn down in those states collectively in the years ahead.

Yes, this is the same story as last week, in which the residents are trying to convince non-profits to buy them a park for over $1 million more than it is appraised for. This transaction has zero percent chance of ever closing and the tenants need to give up and move on and stop wasting everyone’s time.

An official from the Boa Vida Communities made a statement saying, "We have been in touch with Attorney General Heather Hamel on this matter over the past week. On Friday August 8th we inspected each space within the community with a licensed electrician. At that time, it was determined that there were numerous unpermitted alterations made by residents, which cause the power draw to greatly exceed the capacity of the system. These alterations are causing the main fuses to trip, interrupting service for them and their neighbors. Each resident is provided with 50-amp service, by bypassing or altering this without our knowledge or approval they are drawing more energy than the system can provide. This can and has caused outages either localized to their space or street, or even effecting the entire community," said Josh Court of Boa Vida Communities."We will continue to work with licensed electricians to make any repairs or changes needed to ensure the system is being used as designed, and ensure that our residents do not experience interruptions caused by other residents tampering with system," Court said. 

So what you basically have here is a master-metered electrical system with tenants deliberately exceeding the allowable amps by putting in window air-conditioners in excess of what’s allowed, which results in lines melting and fuses blowing. The guilty parties here are clearly the tenants who are cheating and not the park owner.

Both council members asked questions others didn’t, such as whether owners were consulted and what could happen if parks closed. They also underscored the threat of legal retaliation. That threat was all but assured. In an email to the Argus-Courier on Wednesday, Davies said that Harmony “should have multiple suits on file” in the coming weeks, with more expected after.

I hope Petaluma has a big line item in their city budget for legal fees, or otherwise they have really screwed themselves. Common sense tells you they are going to lose this case and, if they do, the parks will also be able to get judgements against the city for their legal fees and damages.

Is this really the best way for Petaluma to spend their tax dollars – to squander millions to appease maybe fifty vocal mobile home park residents? Looks pretty stupid to me.

I also like the obvious fact that this whole bit of idiocy is being orchestrated by some “Soros-inspired” political action group – just look at how professional those protest signs are! I couldn’t get stuff that nice printed at Fastsigns. Are the folks holding these up even actual residents or just being paid to be there? Doesn’t look very authentic to me.

This must be a friend of the woke journalist from last week’s “we need rent control in Montana” story. Here are the facts. Montana is a trifecta Republican state. In all of America history, rent control has only been adopted in trifecta Democrat states. As a result, there is ZERO chance of rent control in Montana. 

And another park bites the dust.

I guarantee you that if we drove around that town, we would find many worse violations in every single-family home neighborhood. This is not the first time a rogue inspector has decided to make it his life’s mission to harass good-natured mobile home park residents. The only way to cure it would be for each and every resident to demand a jury trial. That would clog up the courthouse docket so bad they would cry for mercy. 

Back in the 1990s, James Carville (who worked for Bill Clnton) famously said "drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, no telling what you're going to find” as his reaction to Paula Jones accusing Bill Clinton of sexual assault. This entire debacle at Lil’ Abner mobile home park just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Every week there seems to be a new lawsuit by tenants who were told to move out for redevelopment months ago. You could probably just mount cameras in this park and produce a #1 rated reality television show.

And another park bites the dust.

Maybe the idiot bureaucrats of Washington state should have thought this whole “rent control” thing through a little bit more before they blundered into it. Most mobile home park owners try to keep their annual rent increases to single-digit levels, even though market rents would allow for 50% in some cases. But when a state decides to “stick it” to landlords with rent control, the landlords have no choice but to return the favor to protect their investment. If Washington bureaucrats had simply not adopted what has proven to be the dumbest woke initiative since “defund the police” then the rents would have remained lower. But they chose this idiotic course and now they are guaranteed to have zero housing investment and massive numbers of parks redeveloped into other uses that do not have restricted rents.

In summary, Washington state politicians made a tremendous blunder and they will soon face the consequences. Just watch.

And another park bites the dust.

And another park bites the dust.

This is a regurgitation of the same article as last week, only with even more factual blunders. Let’s start with the obvious. The article is only talking about parks with water wells. That’s maybe 10% of all parks (probably more like 5%). Roughly 8% of Americans live in “trailers”, but less than half of that number live in mobile home parks, with the other half residing on their own private land. So here’s the actual math: 300 million Americans times 3% = 9 million Americans. Then multiply that number by 10% and you get 900,000. Then take away all the water wells that are properly permitted and maintained (about 50% according to the article, which I will bet $100 is completely wrong and more like 90%) and you have 450,000 people. So the title should be “hundreds of thousands” and not “millions”, even based on the writer’s faulty figures and logic.

But then there are other difficulties with the stats here. This entire article series is not based on any actual data but extrapolating some bureaucrat’s opinion regarding only the mobile home parks of Utah. Utah, and that region of the U.S., has some of the worst contaminants of water – including arsenic – that require methods of active extraction. In most of the other states, all you have to contend with is adding chlorine for water purification. So that’s hardly a fair data set to base assumptions on.

There are definitely “trailer parks” out there that have unlicensed water wells with zero supervision. We’ve all driven through their muddy roads where the homes lack skirting and the tenants lack shoes. Nobody buys those, and they remain in the hands of the original mom and pop builders for an eternity. But to claim that those properties are a fair representation of all the properties with licensed water wells that are regularly inspected based on state, county and city laws is ludicrous.  

EVERYTHING squeezes Florida mobile home park residents. Gasoline, food, medicine, insurance, property tax, cable TV, cell phone, water, sewer, trash – you name it. How can you single out lot rent as the only culprit? Look, we live in a country which has the highest inflation and interest rates in 40 years. That’s not the fault of mobile home park owners. I seriously doubt that anyone – including the residents quoted in the story – really believe that. They’re just hoping they’ll get lucky and some bureaucrat will propose rent control. Here’s a news bulletin: there’s 0% probability of rent control in Florida. But if you want to propose it in Vermont, you might have a shot.

I could have told these idiots that selling old mobile homes in an auction format like that would be a total failure. I’ve been to these type of tax sales and nobody ever shows up to bid. Bureaucrats should stick with things that they’re good at … which is basically nothing.

We’ve sold a few mobile home parks to the residents over the years. There’s nothing wrong with that. When the non-profits offer you $42 million for two “trailer parks” any smart person would say “yes., yes, yes”. It’s not rocket science. But will they actually close on the deal? That’s the big question.

But, one week ago, they learned the state cannot buy the property. The appraisal for the 52-acre property came back $1.1 million below the $6.5 million offer from Crown, Preston said. By law, the state cannot pay more than the appraised value.

Yeah, that’s kind of a deal killer. Clearly, the only way to buy the park is to factor in raising the lot rent to market levels and filling vacant lots.  And that pretty much sums up why these “tenant-owned” deals never happen, because they’re not professional deal makers and have zero common sense on the requirements of how to put big mortgages on properties and actually pay the bills.

I’m not sure what they mean by “unaffordable” but it’s an absolute fact that lot rent, insurance, property tax, utilities – pretty much everything related to owning a single-family home, condo, or mobile home – is going up at a rapid pace. Who’s to blame? Not park owners. We’re the folks that have delivered the least expensive form of detached housing America has ever seen. The actual culprit is inflation, which has been the direct result of government over-spending (we’ve got $36 trillion in debt) and other failed policies. If you want to hate someone, hate the government. But blaming mobile home park owners for all the ills of America is ridiculous.

While the bill focuses on rent-related protections, it does not address land use concerns or prevent the redevelopment of manufactured home parks.  But the underlying issue is that property owners can redevelop their land according to zoning allowances, potentially replacing manufactured home communities with apartments, townhouses or commercial developments.  

Well, they finally figured it out. When you enact rent control, mobile home park owners simply tear their parks down and build back better uses. Maybe they should have thought of that first?

And another park bites the dust.

I have three main takeaways from this article:

1. If anyone thinks that a $207 per month lot rent is sustainable in a town with $293,000 single-family home prices and $1,510 per month apartment rents, then you’re too dumb to argue with. Clearly, this owner needs to tear the park down immediately and redevelop into apartments or any other use. I’m sure they’re calling the land brokers right now.
2. The protestors’ signs in the photo are all professionally made and NOT by the residents. This is clearly the work of a well-funded “Free Rent Movement” group. The residents are simply pawns in this game.
3. Massachusetts is a state filled with political and judicial nut cases.

So let me now tell the judge and tenants what will happen next:

1. The park owner will find a better use for the property and give the tenants termination notices.
2. The residents will have to leave and will find all other housing options cost literally ten times more than the park did.
3. The political action group that is funding and promoting this nonsense won’t even take the tenants’ phone calls when they realize they’ve been played for fools.
4. The residents end up 100% screwed and the park owner ends up with a more successful use that makes ten times more money than the park ever did.

How do I know? That’s how these situations always turn out.