Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Sonoma leaders, in the coming weeks, will review a plan to update the city statute regulating mobile home park closures, conversions and cessation of use in response to mobile home park residents who say the city’s existing “outdated” policies endanger a significant affordable housing option and leave them vulnerable to corporate park owners.

During City Council’s Sept. 17 meeting, a group of more than 20 residents and mobile home park advocates told city leaders Sonoma’s existing ordinance, which was adopted in 2004, no longer provides them with sufficient protection in today’s rapidly changing and evermore costly housing...

San Rafael, California - Another mobile home drama is playing out in San Rafael, which could impact other parks that are populated mostly by that the DMV calls RV's. 

The San Rafael RV Park is a tiny San Rafael enclave, where tenants are suing the relatively new owner. Any vehicle that is deemed a recreation vehicle is either self-propelled or a towable trailer. But can it also be a mobile home? 

In San Rafael, where Highway 101 meets Interstate 580, the Park of San Rafael has space for 45 mobile homes and RV's on a one lane street called Baxter's Court. At the moment, there are seven empty spaces available since some people left or were...

Tucked between Highway 101, a BevMo and a car dealership, about 45 RV parking spots line both sides of a one-lane road.

The homes at the RV Park of San Rafael are tiny, some decorated with potted plants, most sit behind short fences. On a recent evening, children ran in and out of the park’s laundromat as their parents threw piles of clothes into washing machines.

Yessica Pérez was seven when her parents moved the family there.

“In the beginning, I think we were the only children in the neighborhood because there were a lot of seniors living here,” she said. “Then, just little by little, there were a lot of Hispanic kids running around...

Four months after Riverside Mobile Home Park in Toledo, OH, was condemned as “unfit for human habitation,” tenants are still living there. With the water shut off and demolition crews on standby, residents say they have nowhere to go.

“We’re trying all the time to find a place,” Susan Luttrell, one of the residents, told 13 Action News. “We’re not trying to just stay here. ... All the rents are so high. When you’re on Social Security, under $1,000 a month, you can’t pay $800 a month on rent. You can’t do it.”

Meanwhile, the Chicago-based owners are trying to sell the condemned park for $750,000—even as they face nearly a quarter million...

SACO (WGME) -- Saco city officials are considering a new ordinance to protect mobile home park residents from substantial rent increases.

The proposed ordinance comes after tenants at the Blue Haven Mobile Park told city councilors that they were facing unfair rent increases.

aco isn't alone in this issue.

Several towns across Maine have adopted rent freezing moratoriums or rent control ordinances in recent months to prevent landlords from hiking up rent costs.

City councilors won't make a decision Monday night at their meeting, but they'll look at how other nearby communities have handled the issue and consider it for their own ordinance.

On Saturday, Sept. 27, the Colorado Democratic Latino Caucus stopped by Glenwood Springs to meet with the Sopris Mountain Collective, a cooperative formed by Cavern Springs Mobile Home Park residents. The stop was part of the Caucus’ “Western Swing Listening Tour,” a biennial effort to connect legislators with communities across the four corners of Colorado.

Five legislators — Representatives Elizabeth Velasco, Javier Mabrey, Julie Gonzales, Matt Martinez and Alex Valdez — joined residents for the meeting. “I think it was a good meeting, and the fact that they came specifically to listen to us means a lot to me,” Judith Alvarez, president...

IN 1988, the tenants of a mobile home community in Novato formed a nonprofit corporation for the specific purpose of purchasing the park and facilitating its conversion into a resident-owned park. Thirty-seven years later, a new generation of residents are still trying to buy it.

Nestled between two green hills, just east of the Loma Verde Preserve in Novato, a cluster of white mobile homes at the Marin Valley Mobile Country Club face the rising sun over San Pablo Bay. The 400 aging renters who live there said they love looking down across a field of safflower at the water and watching the marsh hawks and deer. They are willing to pay...

MANCHESTER -- John MacIver, 73, and many of his neighbors are worried they will not be able to keep up with rising rents in their manufactured home community.

In August, landlord MHC Pine Ridge at Crestwood II LLC sued New Jersey Attorney Matthew Platkin and Manchester Township over a new state law that caps annual rental increases in manufactured home communities like this one.

For MacIver and many of his neighbors in this age-restricted community in the Whiting section of Manchester, rising rents are quickly outpacing their retirement incomes.

"We’re happy about the (rental) cap… Most people move into these places because they’re on a...

The Windsor Town Council on Wednesday will consider adopting an urgency ordinance to pause the closure or conversion of mobile home parks in the wake of one park owner’s intention to close Evergreen Mobile Estates.

Nick Ubaldi, owner of Evergreen Mobile Estates, said when Windsor updated its rent control regulations a few years ago, the move pushed the business to operate at a loss.

“I am prepared to vigorously defend the legal rights of Evergreen Mobile Home Park. I have dedicated substantial resources to litigating similar matters throughout Sonoma County,” Ubaldi wrote in an email to the Town Council on Monday.

Evergreen is managed by...

Mary Sue Callaghan’s one-story home is on a small, quiet street in a manufactured home community just outside Mt. Pleasant, in Westmoreland County.

There are tidy shrubs and flowers along the front of the house.

An American flag hangs from the small porch.

Callaghan has lived here since 2006, when she and her husband moved in. They needed a home that was all on one level and wheelchair accessible because her husband — who has since passed away — had M-S. They purchased a manufactured home, also sometimes called a mobile home.

Callaghan, 67, loves her community. She and her sister, who now lives with her, often cook for other neighbors,...

The West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition has been making the tour of local governments who contributed toward the Aspen Basalt and Mountain Valley Mobile Home Parks purchase to present them with details surrounding the communities’ deed restriction and their financial contribution. 

April Long, executive director of WMRHC, made a recent appearance in front of the Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners on Thursday to fill them in and let the commissioners know what exactly their $3.25 million contribution was buying. 

“The deed restriction is an affordable housing restrictive covenant,” Long explained. “It runs with the property...

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - The deadline to move out has now passed, but some residents are still living in a Toledo mobile home park “unfit for human habitation” that is set to be demolished.

Residents living in the Riverside Mobile Home Park in South Toledo, off the Anthony Wayne Trail, were given notice in May that they needed to find a new place to live.

City leaders said years of owner neglect left the park dangerous and unsanitary. With park owners still nowhere to be found to clean up the property, the mobile home park was set to be demolished.

The original deadline for residents to move was June 23, but that was extended to Sept. 22.

As...

Priced out of traditional homes during an affordability crisis, many in Wisconsin have found another way to pursue an ownership dream.

Experts estimate that more than 100,000 Wisconsin residents live in manufactured homes, the more accurate name for what many call mobile homes or trailers — structures that make up the country’s largest portion of unsubsidized low-income housing. Many live in parks where they own their homes but rent the land beneath them. 

But Wisconsin’s government is failing to enforce basic protections for residents at a time when private equity firms are buying up parks to maximize profits, a Wisconsin Watch/WPR...

Many of the more than 100 residents of the Flying Saucer RV park in Sheridan have lived there for years, turning the spots they rent for their recreational vehicles and manufactured housing into year-round homes with yards, outdoor decks and small gardens.

But now the land is under contract to a development company that intends to build an apartment complex on the site. And unlike mobile home park residents, who enjoy certain protections under state law, people in RV parks don’t have the right to make an offer to buy the land.

That leaves people like Steve Ohlfest and his wife, who’ve lived at Flying Saucer for 20 years, wondering where...

CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – More than 14 acres off Trenton Road is proposed for rezoning in an effort to transition an old, rundown trailer park into a new mixed-use development.

The rezone from R-1 Single-Family Residential District to R-4 and C-5 north of Fairview Lane has passed first reading and will be revisited by the Clarksville City Council this week and next.

Clarksville lawyer Larry Rocconi expanded on the applicant’s plans at last month’s City Council regular session meeting. “Everybody knows Trenton Road, and I’m sure everybody has looked to the right (going north). There’s a trailer park with trailers in various...

The Riverside Housing and Homeless Committee discussed additional amendments to the city's Mobile Home Parks Rent Stabilization Ordinance Monday, just six days after the City Council approved capping annual rent increases at 2.8% beginning in 2026.

Despite the council's October 16 action that exceeded resident requests by setting a cap lower than the 3% being sought, the committee heard proposals for further changes including transparency requirements and restrictions on family transfer rent increases.

The committee took no action on the proposed amendments after contentious debate about whether additional changes were necessary given the...

MIAMI — Tuesday was deadline day for the remaining residents at the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater.

They had until noon to leave the property, which is being redeveloped.

Two separate Miami-Dade judges ruled against tenants trying to fight their evictions in separate hearings on Tuesday.

The judges each ordered that the stays on the plaintiffs’ evictions be lifted.

In Tuesday morning’s case, a woman claimed she was denied her due process rights.

“There’s a level of chaos of what’s going on here,” her attorney, David Winker, said. “Part of this is us trying to put order to this. These people never expected this to happen. People...

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Calif. - Residents at two City of Bell-owned mobile home parks are afraid. Since 2020, they’ve been hearing that the Bell Mobile Home Park and Florence Village are being put up for sale. Now, city officials are telling them that appraisals will be done on their homes as the city prepares a relocation impact report to assess possible relocation costs for residents in more than 200 mobile homes.

Guillermo Gonzalez has lived here for more than 20 years and can’t imagine where he could afford to move on his retiree income. Despite assurances from city officials that they are going to help the residents in every way they...

During Monday's Fortuna City Council meeting the Save Our Seniors movement got one step closer to their goal of a stabilized rent ordinance for mobile home parks in Fortuna. 

In a vote of 3-1 council members voted to draft a temporary ordinance banning rent increases in mobile home parks in order to give city staff more time to develop a permanent ordinance. 

Today I spoke with Save our Seniors advisor Hillary Mosher to find out more.

“I felt really positive when that meeting was over to begin with, It seemed as if the council was discussing among themselves that they wanted to do an MOU, a memo of understanding so they could avoid any...

SANFORD, Maine — The city is pumping the brakes on rent increases for residents at local mobile home parks for 90 days.

In a vote that sparked applause by those in attendance, the Sanford City Council enacted the temporary moratorium on rate hikes by a vote of 6-1 on Sept. 16. City Councilor Jonathan Martell was the lone dissenter.

The temporary nature of the moratorium is justified by two pieces of recently passed legislation, LD 1723 and LD 1765, at the state level, City Manager Steven Buck said. Combined, both pieces of legislation create affordability and stability for those who rent homes and live in manufactured housing communities...

NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. —

As home prices on the Gulf Coast continue to rise, Florida families are increasingly turning to manufactured homes as a more affordable housing option.

Larina Kramer, who moved into a manufactured home a year ago, said, "The other homes we looked at were out of league." She explained that her home cost $150,000, which she described as "nothing."

Communities like Lake Arrowhead along U.S. Route 41 in North Fort Myers are popular among retirees, but they are also attracting younger families. Arlene Fenn said, "I find that our park is turning into younger people. People that are still working." The community is for...

Rent prices for lots in manufactured or mobile home parks are on the rise, according to census data. Some home owners say the increases are pricing them out of the homes they own.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Some mobile and manufactured homeowners say higher lot rents are pricing them out of the homes they own. That's a particular problem in Florida, with one of the largest manufactured housing markets in the country. From member station WUSF in Tampa, Gabriella Paul reports.

GABRIELLA PAUL, BYLINE: A lot of people buy manufactured homes for the same reasons - it's a way to live affordably with neighbors your age and a park that maintains public...

The Massachusetts attorney general is suing the owner of a manufactured housing community in Taunton for “unfair and retaliatory rent increases.”

Willow Terrace Mobile Home Park, at 1 Willow Terrace, is a 74-unit all-ages community owned by BoaVida Communities, which owns 250 manufactured housing sites across the country, according to a Sept. 9 statement from the Attorney General’s Office about the lawsuit.

“As our residents living in manufactured housing communities continue to grapple with rising costs, the last thing they need is community owners violating their rights and our state laws by raising rents as a form of retaliation,”...

PASCO COUNTY, Fla., – Residents of a 55+ manufactured home community are taking the property owner to court after a significant lot rent increase. According to the lawsuit, some residents’ lot rent went up 126% in just one year.

Gail Berghold, 79, moved to The Highlands at Scotland Yards in Dade City in 2017. Berghold told News 6 she was paying more than $600 a month in lot rent, but in January, her lot rent jumped to $1,300.

“I’m lucky if I have enough money for groceries from one paycheck to the other,” said Berghold.

News 6 has been covering the lot rent increases at manufactured home communities across Florida. In many of these...