As the debate about affordable housing goes on in America, one avenue of low cost, fair housing is being taken from society, one home at a time.
Generations of American citizens have welcomed low-cost housing. For decades, many have recognized the value of buying a manufactured home and renting the land it sits on. This method of creating low-cost housing and organizing neighborhoods created mobilehome parks. There is a symbiotic relationship between landowner and homeowner. The homeowner needs a place to put their home and the landowner wants a profitable business for their land.
Today’s Manufactured Homes are not trailers. They are larger and built to current housing building codes. Residents have a substantial investment in their homes resulting in pride of ownership for their home and park. These homes are large attached buildings. Moving them is an unattractive economical alternative. The cost of moving the home subtracts from the investment. Why move a stable home from an existing neighborhood? Owners want to sell their home to a new owner, continuing the cycle of low-cost fair housing.
Park owners have begun interfering with the private sale of manufactured homes to hijack ownership. They use various unscrupulous methods to circumvent local and state ordinances intended to prevent such hijacking. America, with more than four million homes, about half within organized parks, Including California, which has more than 360,000 homes within parks, has written many codes and laws protecting mobilehome living. Unfortunately, park owners are becoming greedy.
Corporations have for many years recognized the profit margin derived from running manufactured home parks. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Corporation has been buying large manufactured home parks for years. They aren’t the only corporation doing so. The individually owned manufactured home park is becoming rare, as corporations continue buying up parks, to add to their high earning investment portfolios.[i]
Manufactured home parks require low maintenance costs, boosting to its profit margin.
Greed has become one of America’s biggest sins. The manufactured home park corporate owners are no exception. They have found that if they prohibit the sale of an existing home within the park, they can then swoop in and purchase the home when the desperate homeowner, or heirs, will settle for pennies on the dollar. The park owner will then rent that home for market rate, removing the home from affordable fair housing.[ii]
To management, a space is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. In their effort to obtain another home they offer the outgoing family a few thousand dollars. Then refuse to permit any prospective buyer permission to move into the park. They suggest the owner remove their structure from the park. The cost of moving and the fact that there are no spaces to move it to make the management offer the only option.
Here in North San Diego County, a three-bedroom apartment will rent for more than $2000 per month. When the park owner becomes the homeowner, this removes the sale of the home from someone who wants to stabilize their housing costs, and places it into the rental category, it triples the amount the park owner can get for his slab of property.
Consider the space within a beach city. Beach city property values are most often the most expensive. Creating affordable housing within a beach city is altruistic and American. But as mobilehome parks are gobbled up by corporations, only looking at their return, this fair priced housing will disappear.
The State of California and other States should care about the institutional acquisitions of manufactured parks. The investors only look to recoup their investment. The officials either care or they don’t. If the government doesn’t care about their citizens, they will continue to ignore the facts. If they do care about these citizens, they will provide legislative relief or prevention.
In my opinion, raising the lowest rents in any community will increase the highest real estate prices in that community. Affordable housing adds to the quality of life and social diversity of society. Affordable housing leads to better health, more jobs, and financial stability for everyone in our city.