By JOANNE DEMICHELE
Silver City
“There’s an investment strategy hiding under the radar that has proven time and time again to be one of the best opportunities for investors, especially in times of uncertainty.” –52TEN–Mobile Home Park Investment Company
The main reason Mobile Home Parks are hot investments is that Mobile Homes are not mobile. It can cost as much to relocate a manufactured home as it would to move a stick-built home. The terms “Mobile Homes” and “Mobile Home Parks” falsely portray these homes and homeowners as portable.
Another reason these investment strategies are popular and able to hide “under the radar” is that mobile home parks and residents are invisible. In New Mexico, manufactured and mobile homes make up 27 percent of our housing stock. The homeowners are primarily: senior citizens, veterans, people with disabilities, the working poor, and people of color—all people who are mostly not seen or appreciated in our society.
Investors buy these parks solely to turn a profit. They sometimes close the park and change the land use, or they increase rents, sometimes more than double, and then acquire the abandoned homes of people who could not afford to stay. As a result, people lose their homes—their most significant investment—and their communities/support systems.
Sara Terry, the award-winning writer and producer of A Decent Home, a documentary film about the people affected by this trend, asks, “When housing on the lowest rung of the American Dream is being devoured by the wealthiest of the wealthy, whose dream are we serving?” Watch the documentary to see what Sara Terry saw: “Time and again, as I film in these parks, I meet compassionate, eloquent people who cherish values of community and generosity, values which seem to have been lost in an aggressively materialistic, me-first society.”
“Manufactured Home” has been the official designation of these homes since 1976 when the US Department of Housing and Urban Development established rigorous building standards. Today’s manufactured homes are durable, safe, solid, and eco-friendly. Yet, forty-seven years later, the terms mobile home, mobile home park (a parking space), trailer, and trailer court are still standard terms that foster disrespect for these vibrant individuals and communities.
Manufactured homes are built in factories and commonly delivered and set up on land in a community where the homeowner leases a designated space from the landowner. However, unlike other land-lease situations, the security of a long-term lease is not available. Instead, many leases are month-to-month, leaving these homeowners vulnerable to the whims of the investors who, all too often, treat people’s homes and their communities like commodities even, or especially, “in times of uncertainty.”
Where else can an investor make a poor investment and raise rents until it becomes an excellent investment? Because the homeowners cannot move their homes and legal protections for homeowners do not currently exist, profit is guaranteed.
The compounded tragedy of this situation is the tremendous need for affordable housing in New Mexico and a growing demand for accessible homes for our aging population to remain independent and socially active.
Senate Bill 298, recently introduced by Sen. Siah Correa Hemphill and Sen. Bill O’Neill recognizes this vulnerable housing situation and addresses the “strategy hiding under the radar” by providing solutions and opportunities for manufactured homeowners living in communities. This is an important first step.