All Forum Posts by: Gail Travers

Actually what we have seen in Akron NY has been just the opposite of "improving the tenant class". By raising the rent to "market value" little is left in people's budget for maintenance of homes - forget home improvements.  As the homes decay, so does the value of the homes and the attractiveness to an "improved class" - whatever that means.  There has been close to zero improvement in the infrastructure here since we were purchased by Sunrise Capital Investors.  The roads need work and the preventative maintenance activities that used to be done by the previous owners are absent.  We already watched a park in our community fall into decay after new owners purchased and mucked up the community.  Now, the tenants there can't even give their homes away.  There is simmering resentment here for the owners.  Beware, tenants all over the country are organizing to rid their parks of investor owners. 

Read Manufactured Insecurity by Esther Sullivan before you consider investing in this predatory business scheme. 

We have already watched one mobile home community in our area succumb to poor corporate ownership. The rent goes up, people can no longer afford to  invest in the upkeep of their homes, the investors put very  little into the maintenance of the community and soon the once vital neighborhood is a sad place to be.  We, in Akron, NY, were willing to fight our corporate owners - Sunrise Capital Investors.  We had a rent strike, which ended when Sunrise agreed to sell the park to us for fair market value.  We were able to secure funding  to purchase the park and form a co-op!  However, fair market value was not enough for our owners and the sale fell through.  We were unable to fund the extra million Sunrise wanted.  Our desire to be free from corporate ownership remains strong.  Sunrise purchased a second park not too far from us and we fear for them as well. 

Frank Rolfe's past comments about mobile home residents and their communities are a sad and lasting testament to the growing disregard some Americans have for one another.  It is much easier to misuse people when you can convince yourself and others that such people are undeserving. "Live and let live" sentiments are seen as weak and a sign of an "entitled" underclass. These are difficult times.  
  

Look what happened in New York yesterday. Times are changing...

Overview of Policies Won in New York:

-- Rent Protection: The bill adopts the first protections against unjustified rent increases for manufactured home residents in New York. Community owners cannot increase rent (including all rent, fees, assessments, charges, and utilities) more than 3%, except if justified by an increase in operating expenses, property taxes, or costs directly related to a major capital improvement. Residents can sue in court if a rent increase above 3% is not justified. Even if an increase above 3% is justified, the rent increase cannot go above 6%, unless the court approves a temporary hardship exception.

-- Tenant rights if existing or prospective owner is going to change the use of the property: If the community owner is going to change the use of the property and no longer operate it as a manufactured home community, the community owner cannot evict tenants for 2 years and can be ordered to pay each homeowner up to $15,000. Also, if the community owner receives an offer from a buyer and the buyer is going to change the use of the property, then the homeowners and tenants must be given 140 days to put together their own offer and have the right to purchase the community.

-- Reforms to rent-to-own contracts: Rent-to-own contracts must clearly detail specific information about the home and the payments so renters understand the terms, and they cannot charge any additional fee at the end of the contract for transfer of ownership. If a tenant with a rent-to-own contract is evicted, the community owner must refund all the rent-to-own payments. The bill also clarifies that a tenant with a rent-to-own contract is a renter until ownership transfers and the community owner is responsible for warranty of habitability and major repairs until ownership is transferred.

-- Requirements for lot rent leases: Leases must include Homeowner/Tenant Bill of Rights that will be developed by the Department of Homes and Community Renewal. If the community owner does not offer a lease, the tenant has all the same rights has a leaseholder and cannot be evicted except for allowable reasons (such as non-payment of rent). Also, a community owner cannot increase rents under tenants are offered a lease.

-- Reforms to other fees imposed by community owner: Tenants only have to pay attorney’s fees to a community owner if ordered by a court. And late fee can’t be more than 3% of what tenant owes and can’t be imposed before 10 days after due date.

For the full Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 click here:

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s6458

Before moving into the Manufactured Housing market, read Esther Sullivan's book, Manufactured Insecurity, to understand the many implications of what it means to own the land on which an owner's home sits.  In NYS, we have been working hard to keep what are considered predatory investors out of the Manufactured Home market.  

This is not about "mean investors".  No one ever suggested all real estate investors are bad. This is about trying to preserve affordable housing for people - working, retired, veterans, families...all of us.  The idea of purchasing manufactured housing parks and squeezing as much as you can out of the captive people who live there is the subject of Frank Rolfe's MHU, podcasts like the ones our owners, SCI, peddle on their website, and loads of others out there who can smell the blood in the water. Parks are being snapped up by corporate investors and others who then wring all they can out of the people who live there.  Really, it's a thing!!  It's a killing!!  I guess it is about entitlement.  I just don't agree with who the people who feel entitled are.  Pretty sure it's not the people who purchased homes they could afford  in neighborhoods they love  and who have limits on what they can pay.   

Some investors, like our owners, Sunrise Capital Investors, will tell you they do it to save affordable housing for the future while turning the screws on the current tenants. Jacking up the rent and intimidating homeowners  while claiming they are only upgrading the park to true market value - all due to the poor management of the previous owners - is the line we get. The  real motivation is  profit.  Low investment, high returns, captive group of low income people who can't afford to move their homes so will do just about anything to keep a roof over their families' heads, few governmental regulations to protect tenants of parks, general stereotypical disregard for the people who live in parks (you know, trailer trash, etc. that continues to be perpetrated), low maintenance on the part of the owners since most homes are owned by the tenants, the ability to hire a low paid on-site maintenance person to assume 24 hour responsibility for the park...doesn't seem to be a downside, does there?   Except for the evictions, the homelessness, the physical and emotional stresses on the tenants, the social problems associated with rootlessness, the cost to the local community and state when people who were paying their own way suddenly can't afford food or medicine...these are just some of the results of housing insecurity.  The instability caused by evictions, both from parks where the land is being redeveloped, or from unaffordable rent increases when a new owner steps in to "save us" causes a burden on the greater community while the owners continue to rake in their profits.  There are better ways to save affordable housing and it does not include investors.   

There will always be people looking for affordable housing.  In the United States, that is a vanishing commodity.  Mr.  Rolfe's persistent imaging of people who live in mobile homes as "other" and his negative stories about how those people live allows MOST (not all, I am sure) investors to feel justified squeezing every single penny they can from people who have very little.  After all, where else can they go?  The notion that  "there is a lot of money to made off  the poor" is a persistent theme in MHU and throughout the industry of podcasts and literature about mobile home investing.  

As noted by Esther Sullivan in her acclaimed study, "Despite its devalued image, the mobile home park proves profitable for a range of players, from everyday individual investors to small businesses moving  evicted homeowners to national corporations selling to  low-income buyers getting their first taste of a manufactured America Dream.  A political economy  of poverty operates within these various corners of the mobile home park empire, where the needs of residents and the insecurity of their housing tenure offer sites for interested parties to extract surplus value."  

I call this predatory because it seeks to exploit others.  I call people who buy parks, jack up the rent, fail to invest in the park in any way, and use threats of eviction as a continual assault to keep the tenants in line, predators.  Investors, like Mr. Rolfe, target the growing class of American working poor. "You cannot build a business model around poor  white trash.  It won't work; you need  poor but paying tenants." Mr Rolfe's words.  Again with the ick factor.  

Oh  Lord, where to start??  I read the Times article.  The best  part was when Mr. Rolfe suggested investors stay out of New York due to their tenant friendly laws.  As a New York resident, I heartily agree!!  Stay out!!  Squeezing every cent of money out of people at the other end of the economic spectrum is not noble nor helpful nor admirable.  It is predatory!  I find the colorful stories of Mr. Rolfe's experience in mobile homes cheap shots and lacking in any respect for the hand that feeds him.  I don't think taking 40% - 50% of someone's already meager income makes them happy.  It is better than homelessness, I guess, so that IS something to be happy about.  Always a good day when the kids get to eat and have their own bed to sleep in.  Could be worse - we could all be in shelters.  Pretty low bar for determining how "happy" tenants feel. 

Also, just to address the John Oliver show, his team had the help of Esther Sullivan on their research team...you know, she literally  wrote the book on manufactured housing and what is happening to this last pool of unsubsidized homes.  John Oliver and his team did their research.  

Lastly, since our purchase by SCI, there  have been zero improvements in this park. It is a mistake to think that owners have any altruistic ideas about the people who live in their parks.  It is about making a big return on a small investment, displacing as much of the expenses as possible on tenants and farming out the maintenance to a low paid employee who is available 24 hours a day to meet the needs of the park.  

Or, mobile home owners can form associations, lobby  politicians for legal protections and right of first refusal when a park owner decides to sell, become active in groups fighting for tenants rights, educate themselves on resident owned communities, work collaboratively with other parks under similar attack, build strong neighborhoods  and do the real work of saving affordable housing by keeping it, well, affordable.