Manufactured homes are the largest source of affordable, unsubsidized housing in America. Roughly one third of all manufactured homes are sited in manufactured home communities (MHC’s), often referred to in the media as “ trailer parks” or “ mobile home parks”.  Both phrases are misnomers. 

A vast majority of manufactured homes are never moved after being sited. The cost of moving is prohibitive to most home owners, who are often senior citizens, low wage working families and people with disabilities, and home owners risk structural damage to their home if they move it. Compounding this reality is that home owners in these communities live with a precarious status in that while most own their home, they rent the land underneath it. This leaves them vulnerable to property owners who arbitrarily spike lot rents, fail to properly maintain community services such as sewer/septic, water and roads. 

Over the last decade the situation has gotten worse. As reported in multiple media outlets, private equity firms and other Wall Street actors have been buying MHC’s nationwide because they produce reliable, largely passive income, or are prime real estate for redevelopment into condominiums. commercial space, or high end  apartment buildings. This trend has displaced a great many people, wholesale, from their homes, while overburdening millions more with higher rents, fewer services and a deteriorating quality of life.  It threatens a vital source of housing for low income people at a time when housing unaffordability is a nationwide crisis.