For decades, manufactured homes (a.k.a. mobile homes) have provided a more affordable housing option for individuals and families with lower or fixed incomes. But the residents of these homes routinely face predatory landlords and threats of eviction—prompting some to organize to fight back.
Without protections in place, residents are not treated as human beings but as mere speculative investments.
Kevin Borden, executive director of MHAction, a national grassroots organization representing manufactured home community residents, says in an email to The Progressive that residents of these homes face threats to their health, income, and food security, “with no assistance from, and in some cases further abuses by, corporate landlords.” With greater demand for rural housing expected after the pandemic, he says problems for residents will only worsen.
In recent years, according to a 2019 report, private equity firms, real estate firms, and trillion-dollar institutional investors have “converged” on the manufactured home sector, relying on residents’ “limited mobility” to “ensure steady revenues, squeezing fast profits out of low-income families and seniors.”
“Many of the private equity firms and institutional investors that have recently invested in manufactured housing communities have been major investors in apartment buildings and single family homes,” the report states. “As housing costs have increased in other types of housing, investors have looked to manufactured homes as a relatively untouched sector.”
In many cases, manufactured home landlords live out-of-state, which can lead to neglected maintenance and repairs, poor management, and a lack of communication. This also allows them to impose higher rents or serve eviction notices without having to witness the harm caused by their actions.
Without protections in place, residents are not treated as human beings but as mere speculative investments.
“They are certainly vulnerable to all the same perils as everyone else with likely higher risks due to lower incomes, higher likelihood of unemployment, less access to medical care,” National Housing Law Project senior attorney Lisa Sitkin says in an email to The Progressive. “Even if they own their homes,” she adds, “they are not accumulating wealth since manufactured housing generally depreciates like a car.”
According to the Manufactured Housing Institute, there are roughly twenty-two million people living in manufactured homes in the United States. The pandemic has elevated the importance of housing justice to new levels, as government inaction toward corporate greed allows people to be pushed out of their homes during the current economic crisis.
But residents of manufactured homes have long been subject to exploitation. Take, for instance, what happened to Candi Evans, a resident of a manufactured home community in North Liberty, Iowa.
“There are also concerns over arbitrary and excessive fees as well as harassment through new and unnecessarily restrictive rules.”
In 1998, Evans and her husband bought their home in Golfview Mobile Home Court. In 2002, Evans’s husband died of cancer, and she continued operating the roofing company they owned. After paying off their home, their vehicles, and medical bills, Evans was debt-free before retiring in 2017.
Evans, in an email to The Progressive, says she thought her future was secure, having saved a “small nest egg,” living where lot rent was “reasonable,” and feeling “content with my life.”
“I knew my neighbors,” Evans writes. “The man next door that was born with no hands and no feet, the retired vet that travels through the community on his motorized wheelchair, the young families with young children and those children that gather at the end of the street to shoot basketball on a summer evening, and like me, my retired neighbors. Our community is made up of these people.”
But then, in 2019, a Utah-based private equity firm, Havenpark Capital Partners, LLC (now rebranded as Havenpark Communities), began buying up manufactured home communities throughout Iowa.
In March that year, Evans wrote a rent check for $295. About a month afterward, Evans found a notice taped to her door, informing her that the park had been sold and was under new ownership. There was no information provided on who bought the park or how to get in touch with these new owners, she says. A few days later, she received another notice alerting her that her rent would rise to $475 by the first of June.
Havenpark purchased the properties of Golfview Mobile Home Court, Midwest Country Estates (Waukee), North American Mobilehome Park (Indianola), Sunrise Mobile Home Village (Iowa City), and West Branch Mobile Home Village (West Branch). After acquiring ownership of these residences, Havenpark imposed 60 to 80 percent rent hikes.
Though often called “mobile homes” or “trailers,” these names are misleading for manufactured homes, which are more difficult to relocate in the case that a resident can no longer afford the lot rent.
“Many of the homes are too old to move,” Evans says. “Many cannot be moved and even those that can, it is too expensive for most. My home cannot be moved because it is too large due to an addition we built on when we bought it. Most of the homes in this park [Golfview] are manufactured homes, not what some visualize as ‘mobile.’ ”
If evicted from a space in the community, some owners of manufactured homes are forced to sell their home for well below its value or even lose it altogether, facing a potential domino-effect of debt and homelessness.
“Something had to be done,” Evans says.
And so, in April 2019, the Golfview Residents Association was created, with Evans serving as the group’s vice president. By the end of the year, these residents started converging to facilitate statewide coordination. This led to the creation of the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents’ Network, a statewide coalition of local residents’ associations and residents from parks across Iowa.
“Bringing to the forefront of people’s minds that safe, affordable housing is a right, the necessity for organizing was imperative,” Evans says. “Iowa has no protections for residents of manufactured home parks. Apartment dwellers have more rights and they have not invested near the amount of money that a manufactured home park resident has. The highest percentage of residents own their own home.”
The network points to out-of-date laws such as Iowa Code Chapter 562B for creating an imbalance where the rights of park owners are favored over those of residents. To prevent such abuses in the future, its representatives and allies supported HF 2351/SF 2238, which would have been an important first step in helping to secure the rights of manufactured home owners and renters. The bill received bipartisan support from thirty legislators, fifteen Democrats and fifteen Republicans, but met with opposition from the Iowa Manufactured Housing Association.
Iowa House of Representatives Speaker Pat Grassley, grandson of U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, refused to advance the pending bills and removed them from the committee agendas. Grassley and other Republican lawmakers had also received financial contributions and reelection funds from the Iowa Manufactured Housing Association, a group representing landlords. Pat Grassley received $30,000 from the group’s political action committee on September 8, 2020.
The failed leadership from Governor Kim Reynolds and other elected officials allowed the pandemic to spread at devastating rates across the Hawkeye State over the last year. Having provided inadequate relief and protections for Iowans, manufactured home residents have been placed in greater danger due to continued abuses.
Evans says many residents are worried about rent increases, no-fault evictions, and intimidation. At Golfview, the rent was increased by $35 last April, in the midst of the pandemic.
“There are also concerns over arbitrary and excessive fees as well as harassment through new and unnecessarily restrictive rules,” Evans adds.
On February 9, HF 442 was introduced in the Iowa State House. This bill, according to Evans, “does not cover the needs as was proposed to legislators in 2020.”
Members of the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents’ Network and their allies are calling for the creation of a “Residents’ Bill of Rights,” comprising five pillars: rent protection, good cause eviction standards, fair fees, fair and legal leases, and resident-first right of refusal when parks are put up for sale.
Evans says the goal is to create or maintain a safe and affordable community so “residents feel comfortable once again with their neighbors and enjoy a life they had planned on when they moved to these parks. The only clear way to ensure this can be implemented is through legislation. Ensuring that protections are solid, clear laws.”