Legislation MN is working on to try and tax incentivize MHP owners to favor selling communities to the residents.
BUT the links in the article to another story are i think great reads
2017: Residents rented the land their mobile homes sat on for about $480 each month. Comparable situations are hard to come by.
I know that certain submarkets in MN are expensive that could have been low but nots rue even a 600 rent would fend of the viability of an 800 unit apartment project.
And one resident Frank Adelmann
âThis is my home. Iâm not going to leave Lowry Grove.â
Adelmann died on June 20. The St. Anthony Police Department confirmed he took his own life.
This is a cost above anything ⊠human life
Additional comment from article:
âA number of people moved to other mobile home parks â those were the ones lucky enough to have manufactured homes that could be moved,â he told MinnPost in 2018. âOther folks, families have split up and people have moved away from the region or moved out of the Twin Cities. Other people went through periods of homelessness afterwards, so thereâs a wide range of experiences.â
Another good referenced article regarding this issue in Twin Cities:
What is your solution for the low income, or disabled poor people currently living in mobile home parks? Where should they go? Mobile home parks used to be a way for low income people to survive. Now, with flipping and the buying up of older âmom & popâ parks, raising rents to market values, etc and an enormous amount of aging baby boomers, there are challenges. New owners come in and raise the rents astronomicallyâŠdisplacing people who have lived in the same park for decades. They donât have the protections if apartment dwelling, nor rent controls. They are at the mercy of new investors.
I dont have a solutions as im not posting this as a solution, just clarity and perspective. People want the rents to stay low. Which is great , in theory, but you see what happens in certain situations? The parks get wiped out. So rather than having the rents higher and might sustain more people, you just displaced that whole population.
The problem is this, you have a bag that can hold five pounds but you have 10 pounds that you need to stick in there and the number continues to go up. This is one component of the solution. While it would be great to keep rents stagnant , we see that does not work.
You can not take too narrow of a view on this topic but has to be all encompassing to see how every person in the supply and demand chain is effected and see how all the pieces assemble together.
I would ask if you speak highly of the protections of an apartment and or product with rent control is superior to manufactured housing, why not choose that instead?
Here are some of the realities not mentioned in these articles:
The rents will go up just as fast in the resident-owned park as they do if itâs privately owned â sometimes faster. Many resident-owned communities have already had significant rent hikes post-purchase due to the reality that the parks need often costly capital upgrades as well as having to continually cover ever-increasing costs of utilities, insurance, taxes, etc. We have sold a park through ROC and we have no problem with the residents buying their park if itâs at the same price as any third-party, but letâs all admit that itâs nonsense to believe that all costs will magically stop upon purchase and that no utility line or road will ever need work again. Total nonsense that may appease casual readers in a newspaper but have no basis in fact at all. I have heard that there are already some resident-owned parks that are back on the market because the residents found they could not successfully manage the park (due to bad collections) and want a professional to take it over again.
There are a huge number of Americans that cannot live in conventional housing. Some of these are the homeless â the subject of many articles already â but there are also people that cannot actually afford any traditional housing type and need to be on Section 8 or some form of social subsidy that are trying to scrape by in mobile home parks when itâs really not possible. The problem is that Section 8 cannot afford to take on even a fraction of the number of households that need its assistance. So everyone (government, media, etc.) wants to look the other way and make this clear social problem the responsibility of the mobile home park owner. When you bring an old park back to life, you have to put in additional capital, hire actual managers, and do many costly things and this requires higher rents. Those that could not afford to live in the park based on actual income are naturally displaced, and should potentially go into social programs from the government that are designed to be a safety net. But the government wonât take them in. You canât pin this responsibility then on private owners. Itâs not their problem. Itâs also not fair to the 99% of residents who want nice roads, common areas, and professional management to say âsorry, we canât bring your park back to life because the person in lot #5 might get priced out of living hereâ. Everywhere I go in America today, there are complete neighborhoods being renovated, new capital flowing in, rents increasing, and everybody finds this to be a great state of affairs. In so doing, some merchants canât afford to pay the rent, some hotel guests hate the new rates, and some apartment dwellers have to find new places to live. But for some reason only mobile home park owners are criticized for what our nation calls âprogressâ in every other application. Total hypocrisy. Has anyone heard of the new âOpportunity Zoneâ rules to foster investment in blighted areas that the government is promoting? Do you think any of those purchases will increase rents on apartments, retail, or industrial tenants?
I know that America is in a strange place right now with capitalism and socialism in what appears to be a cage fight but park owners want nothing to do with this narrative. We offer the lowest cost form of detached dwelling in the U.S. We are the only non-subsidized form of affordable housing. We donât solve the problems of society and cannot replace governmental programs â like Section 8 â that are bankrupt and ineffectual for those who cannot afford to live in the mainstream forms of housing. We have referred many struggling residents to these channels over the years, but we always hear back that the government programs arenât accepting new applicants. Maybe that would be a better use of media attention?
Regarding the Resident owned community. I know i have had mailers go out where a ROC is willing to entertain offers. I dont know if this is as they are looking to get out or a fiduciary responsibility to the ownership structure.
Here is an example of where ELS actually bought a Resident Owned Community from residentsâŠ
I am speaking of an excellent mobile home parkâŠone that was managed beautifully managed by the same family/owners since the 1950s. The residentsâŠsome - as my parents have lived there for over 2 decades. They were encouraged to garden and beautify the park, and their owner lotsâ âfree waterâ was how it was encouraged by the management. So there are flower beds, and gardens galore. Older folks love to garden.
Now the park was sold (owners retiring to Florida), the new managers immediately are putting in water meters. There goes the gardening, the beautification by owners. They canât afford to water. Those elderly and others on fixed incomes, (this park has no crime, no police problems) are seeing all kinds of changes.
The quaintness of this lovely vintage park is being quickly changed to all dull ugly grey same type homes. They all look the same! Sorry, but mid century modern homes in turquoise, pink, mint green, and yellow are very trendy and pretty. In another state, these would be considered valuable. Aesthetically, the park looks like a new ugly cheap subdivision going up.
The lovely trees are being cut down to make room for double wides. The rents are going up way way too fast. The residents on fixed incomes canât afford to live here. The new owners are looking for profits and nothing more. It breaks all of our hearts. The owners do not seem to care about the long time residents.
I am wondering what you mean by âBringing and old park back to lifeâ if itâs always been well managed, and has no crime, or problems. New owners come in and start making lots of changes based on profitability, and not quality of life, caliber of property values, or security of long tern occupancy? As I see it for my parents situation, the new owners want to charge market rates comparable to apartments for the lot rents, despite the owners now needing to pay for water/sewer AND still maintain their owner owned homes.
Shamrocks94âright on!!! Generally the people starting parks 35-50 years ago were very efficient, hands on, got their hands dirty and even had a second job!!! Developers had a one on one connection with their tenants and they would bring in NEW HOMES!!! The atmosphere was very pleasant since in most cases the situation was a WIN-WIN environment and evictions or abandoned homes was zilch! When parks went to their second or third owners the atmosphere was basically of excessive profits and presently greed in the sense that owners selling parks below a 7 cap are forcing new owners to push park rent tremendously higher to receive a decent rate of return. The real problem is too much money after a business model of mobile homes parks that is in decline (RV parks sites are in demand and full with tenant owned RVâs) When a park is placed on line (park store) there are now over 100 potential buyers wanting more information on ONE PROPERTY!!! Just 10 years prior a nice 9 cap parks could not fine a buyer. Looking at most listing presentlyâouchâfull or empty spaces, or new park owned homes tenants cannot afford, property is trashed, and full of drugsâwho really wants that business??? We have just completed another DD on a park and wrote it off. Have completed 12 DD in the past 3 yearsâmostly problems and always over priced once we one dig into the REAL numbers!! The next downturn will partial fix the over supply of buyers, since most people need to experience the reality world that most good parks are NEVER for sale or 3 people are in line IF it comes up for sale. The present status of park owners know it they sell they cannot find a decent replacement parks so the good property are not for sale!!!
My parents park is not âin decline.â No drug dealers, prostitution, etc. The lot rent was reasonable. The park owner merely retired. So in comes the new owners, making all these changes. Where will the long term fixed income, and the disabled residents go when lot rents wildly increase? When the rent plus the new water/sewer bill increases by $100 to 150 or more a month, this puts many home owners at severe disadvantage. Extremely severe. Pay rent and donât eat / donât pay for medicines - I know a few elderly single women in that situation right now. Some canât sell their homes for a variety of reasons, and some have nowhere else to go. There is little to no solutions on the home ownerâs end. Itâs a sad day for the poor in mobile home parks.
Buying up mobile home parks is trendy profitable business these days. I am sure you have heard it all before though. Have a nice day.
It could be the precedent in certain parts of CA like San Jose and SF/Bay Area cities if the park is in a nice part of town, like this one. The developer would still have to convince the park owner to sell though.
Austin working to zone any parks with mobile homes as being zoned for mobile home parks to preserve affordable housing.
Seems so ironic that so many cities work to push them out and then once you hit the point of realizing the benefit in the grand scheme , they will fight to make them stay âŠ
Oregon trying to push for resident co ops also kind of interesting someone took the time to put together a map of all the closed parks that shows lot counts as well.