How residents are organizing to keep mobile home parks affordable
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- Mobile home residents sometimes get questions like “do you have running water?” or “how do you flush the toilet?” But inside the Boston Trailer Park - the only mobile home park in Boston, Massachusetts - one resident offers a tour of spacious home with a remodeled kitchen and full washer/dryer. Not only does it have running water, but it's also the only place in the city the resident says she could afford to live.
Twenty-two million Americans live in mobile homes - once known as “trailers,” a vestige of the days when the homes were all on wheels. These days they're also known as manufactured housing. They are one of the most affordable forms of housing in the country. The communities
used to be mostly family owned, but in recent years they’ve been snapped up by investors eager for a steady cash flow.
Most residents own their homes, but not the land under them. They pay rent for the land and for things like water, sewer and road repairs. When investors buy mobile home parks - also known as manufactured housing communities - they may bring capital to improve parks. But critics say they raise rents and make the parks unaffordable for low-income residents.
There’s a growing movement in the US to help mobile owners buy their parks and keep them affordable. Halifax Estates, in Halifax, Massachusetts is the largest resident-owned mobile home park in the country. Resident Deborah Winiewicz who helped fend off investors there, is now an advocate for mobile homeowners in New England working with ROC USA (Resident Owned Communities). ROC USA and the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI) work with residents to get funding to buy their parks.
In this video we see residents of Greentree Estates in West Wareham, Massachusetts vote for board members of their resident cooperative. They are working to match an investor's offer. But investor interest in the mobile home market has driven up prices, and it is getting tougher for residents to put together the loans and funding they need to compete.
Former Boston Mayor Tom Menino helped Boston Trailer Park residents buy their park so it would remain an affordable form of housing. A decade later, the median home price in Boston has more than doubled. In a sign of the times, there's a new apartment complex next door the Boston Trailer Park. Rents for a one-bedroom unit there are close to $3,000 a month.
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0:00 Mobile home stereotypes
0:34 The largest resident-owned mobile home park
0:54 An affordable housing solution
1:27 Investors love mobile homes
1:51 Residents fighting back
When she said, "We get to say you can't have it, because we own it." That was great!
The last words of the video because everyone deserves a home is a good statement
I owned my own mobile home and when I retired and received my social security I thought it would be enough. But they raised the lot rent and utilities and I had to sell. I had thought I figured it out ok. I would not let my son help as he had his own family. My ex lives on a golf course and I live in low income housing. I am finally blessed on my 5th move to be somewhere nice and not full of drug addicts and scary people. I think senior housing should be only seniors but a lot of places let in so called disabled which were addicts. Party all the time it is not fair to seniors wanting a peaceful life.
I live in a large senior park that is still privately owned by the family who developed it. If the heirs decided to sell it, I hope they would give residents the offer. I don’t mind buying the land, paying more property tax and management fee to have a co-op park. Every park that was bought by investors is becoming hostile place to live and not maintained well.
Perhaps a good idea would be to proactively talk to your neighbors & go to a mortgage lender and work on making a bid on the property (as a group) yourselves.....before the owners get an offer from someone else. don't wait
I lived in Sprawling Hills Park on Tubman Road in Brewster in the late 70's & it was BEAUTIFUL! I loved it! It was a great blessing to live there & l truly miss it! ❤️
That is the key to buy it and stick together because you all have a common goal.
when the little guy fights back, strength in numbers. Keep the fight going strong till you succeed and God be with them.
AMEN...❤😊 EVERY MOBILE PARK Should Do CO-OP TOO!!!
Every park has the ability to become a resident owned cooperative. And look for funding through lower cost financing, from places like the cooperative fund of new england. look them up and see the stories.
Now, we have 3-D house that costs only $50,000 for a studio house in Japan. Made with concrete so it’s tough against storms. I hope I will be a standard for the world!
This was very informative. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent, blessing to all
Wish we had them here in NZ! Extremely needed here housing is huge problem and it's out pricing the everyday people. Help!
Very Good Report!
It should be illegal for investors or corporations are any organizations to buy multiple parks and force people out this is ridiculous it's all about money and they're nothing but greedy bastards.
Great job !!
My mother lived in a senior home park, she was lucky enough to not have a mortgage because their park was bought by a company out of the country and monthly lot rent has gone from a reasonable amount to over 600. per home, and these folks also have to pay property tax on their homes as well…so for most, it’s becoming hard to stay there. When there was a possibility of the home owners co oping their park, they were easily priced out of the bidding very early on, so they stay, until it just gets too much…
Well done! I just got into Real Estate Investing but to combat the high housing costs! My goals include someday provide affordable housing for millions with god’s direction 💟☮️✝️⭐️
A different kind of nimby. 0:30 these mobile homes are nice and big. They are also unaffordable to young working class people.
investors love parks because lot rent increases have no ceiling. Mobile homes are just not that mobile in reality. There used to be some on Rte 1 in Peabody mass. The town was trying for years to get rid of them,but they were owned by the residents,I think. I believe they are still there.I guess the purpose of the poor is to be exploited by the rich. Mass,. is a rich state and there is a solution to these problems. They just squandered 10 million on a hideous statue to honor MLK. I do honor him but that "art" work is horrible. Housing poor is not a priority.
"The purpose of the poor is to be exploited by the rich". Wow, that's a powerful statement.
@@homelessmillionaire1 Its the truth. High interest rates,Payday loans, ripoff trailer lot rents, rental furniture, week to week tenancy, homeless shelters that cost millions to build.
Yea but state by state is different. From this report Mass. is helping. Try states out in the mid-west or any unregulated state and it gets brutally archaic quick.
Tralor parks can be trashy and some are really nice
Make it sharable
Hi James,
It is shareable. but this is also the link as well:
ruclips.net/video/0n3aSckY1Fg/видео.html
Take control, be proactive, don't wait. Assemble your neighbors, meet with a mortgage lender, and make offers on your property now. Don't wait and whine later
"Mobile homes or manufactured homes are acceptable, but..." I got news for you sweetheart...if it gets delivered on axles, I don't care what you call it, IT'S A TRAILER. Plus...with lot rents averaging $700.00 or more per month for a tiny piece of land that one can never own; that's not "affordable". That's a mortgage payment.
After 1976 they were no longer called trailers they are mobile homes .
No! Off grid is.
Snob laws in blue states prevent manufactured housing on your own properties. Massachusetts is a prime example.
Developers are the lowest form of life on the planet!
What's a shame is the amount of land and natural resources that is utilized in order to accommodate people to say nothing about the ever encroachment on already endangered ecosystems. Mobile home parks are a scourge to indigenous populations such as native species of birds and other wildlife. Why can't these people move to other regions such as Mexico or Central America where the cost of living is much, much more affordable?
Okay. 1.) Mobile home parks take up far less land area than traditional neighborhoods and not all are predominantly concrete. Many have rustic settings with surrounding vegetation remaining in tact for the wildlife. 2.) You are implying that other states that have different natural habitats, have no wildlife that live in those habitats, which isn't true. 3.) The actual issue is that Americans have been lead to believe that we must live in unnecessarily large houses that take up more land/more resources and therefore are more damaging to the natural environment and cost much more. Mobile homes aren't the problem. Most are much smaller than traditional homes and are 600-1000 square feet. We should all be moving toward smaller homes. This is why the tiny house movement has become so popular. It uses less land and resources to construct these homes.
Okay. 1) Mobile home parks take up far less space, use less resources to build the homes and are less disruptive to wildlife than traditional neighborhoods. 2) Most people would have to move then to another country by your thinking unless they can pay $3,000 or more a month in rent. This shows that you obviously don't know how little the working poor earn, even in Massachusetts where our minimum wage is $15 an hour, and much higher than most states. If someone can't afford to pay $3,000 a month for their rent, where on earth would they get the extra cash to move abroad? More than likely they can't afford to move to another state nevermind another country! 3) The parks that they showed weren't in disrepair or unkempt. The real problem is that unlike in most other countries, Americans have been led to believe that if your home isn't 3,000 square feet that they live in a dump. This is why we have a housing crisis in the first place.
So you are saying that all those horrible McMansion subdivisions that take up huge amounts of space and frequently result in massive amounts of trees and native habitat being removed, so they can have a golf course, is okay...because they are not owned by "these people"?? Yes, we need to preserve our natural resources and endangered ecosystems - tell that to the uber-wealthy who build homes that are 10 times the size of a mobile home.
@@kaceykelly7222 I've never been a fan of McMansions and urban sprawl because of the havoc those communities have on native habitats. The uber-wealthy have a lot to answer for with respect to how much CO2 their private planes and lifestyle spew into the environment. I have advocated for a lifetime carbon cap a person can consume during one's lifespan.
“These people”, you’re surely not talking about people whose family has always called Massachusetts home for multiple generations? My family has called the area home for hundreds of years and I through divorce has suddenly become one of those people… so you’re saying I should have to move to another country instead of being able to live in an affordable home?