This is a market failure. They really can barely be moved once placed, and the standard arrangement is that the park owner effectively owns all the homes, since he can just raise the rates to extort most of their value, and it's still not worth moving them. This would never have been legal if the residents were rich enough. Enough people realize this that it has mostly killed the industry, but not enough. Production is down around 80% from the peak in the 70s.
Mobile homes are also a pretty awful option on total costs on a fundamental basis, because maintenance is mostly not possible, but with they can end up doing better after NIMBY restrictions on building.
The article celebrates the wonderful result of resident groups giving in and paying the ransoms collectively.
Markets exist apart from capitalism. Saying it’s a market failure is not the same thing as saying it’s a failure of capitalism. Capitalism can succeed through failures of the market to provide the best outcomes.
Markets =! Capitalism.
That’s nonsense. Market forces have existed as long as there have been markets. Capitalism as a system is a few centuries old. Markets have been around for 10,000 years.
> since he can just raise the rates to extort most of their value, and it's still not worth moving them.
That's not true in Oregon, due to 2 progressive rent control laws:
-landlords of all rental property (besides new, iirc) can only raise rents 3% + inflation rate per year. There is no limit
-to convert a trailer park to homes, each trailer that can be moved has to be moved at developer's expense; if it can't be moved, it needs to be bought out at fmv + one year lease.
7 percent not 3. https://www.opb.org/article/2023/03/27/oregon-housing-inflation-salem-brookings-politics-landlords-rent-control/
Which allows rent hikes at close to 14 percent. For 1k rent that would be an increase of 140 dollars per month
At least it’s something. My state has no renter protections. In Feb of last year we renewed our lease. Rent went from $945 to $1320. An almost $400 increase.
Haha my two bedroom apartment went from 1800 total but I had a roommate so I was paying 900. To if I was going to renew this month it would be 2800 and my roommate got married and moved out.
I mean, why build whatever you where going to build if you can just get rich from a renter that is willing for some reason, to pay more rent than it would take to buy a new home.
Homeowners of single family homes have known this since the start. Plus, obviously mortgage payment is higher than rent (in present value term, because you can lower a mortgage payment by paying it down). Otherwise, why would anyone rent and not own in the first place? You are basically paying for no risks of an increase.
But what does this have to do with the collapse? If anything, this is anti-collapse. Plus, only 8% of Americans live in mobile home parks.
> only 8% of Americans live in mobile home parks.
This seemed bad from my perspective in the UK - millions of people not able to afford a real house or flat. Maybe because of how cold and wet it is here. And the sites could well be far from amenities and public transport. I looked up the figure for the UK and it's 3% of households - likely less as a percentage of the population as it's mainly retired people in park homes here.
It's really difficult to live full time in a trailer park here, most places only allow 11 months use. Tbh I do think the government could make it easier to live in them to ease housing constraints a bit, obviously nimbys would oppose it though
Can you read? That is exactly what I said, and I quote "Plus, obviously mortgage payment is higher than rent (in present value term, because you can lower a mortgage payment by paying it down). Otherwise, why would anyone rent and not own in the first place?"
You know what "present value term" means, or do I need to give a lesson here too?
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For real most I've ever had to come up with for an apartment closing costs alone on any home loan I could get would have been five grand or more and that doesn't include down payment.
I make 60k a year, have about 20k in savings, I'm single and no kids. All the houses in the area that I rent are 250k to 400k. They sell to "people" giving 20 - 50k over asking price. I can't compete in this market and haven't been able to for a number of years. I rent.
Read George Orwell’s short story[The Spike](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-spike/).
The same attitudes and the same problems have kept this model functioning for centuries. Note the people in that system will say the same thing they say today: that it’s “necessary” to waste the excess of capitalism in order to incentivize work.
Submission Statement:
This is related to collapse because part of the collapse we're seeing throughout the world, is the selling and destruction of people's homes. While this article centers on the United States and in particular the city of Portland in Oregon, it's heartening to see people unite and start pooling resources to obtain the land where they live, so they can keep living there.
While a third of total mobile home parks in the United States have already been sold to private corporations for limitless rent, expect to see (and help) people start up similar efforts where you live.
This happened to my parents near Asheville, NC. Owner of the park died, lady inherited it from him, she decided she didn't want to work anymore. Made everyone sign leases "for legal reasons" with the outside maintenance company she hired. Once the leases ended they were forced out of their lot. Trailers don't usually move very well after they've sat a long time so they were forced out of their homes effectively. She bought them up for incredibly cheap or used the lease terms to seize them for "lost rent" on the lots.
She went from getting $100-200 a month lot rent to taking people like my parents' homes away who had been living there for 20+ years and then charging $1000 for renting out the trailers in good shape.
Sadly, you are right. It only seems to be getting worse here. What is their long term game plan? It seems to me that they want to make everyone powerless and poor except them.
They want you to give up all your pssesions to them, and for you to do whatever the fuck they want from you.
Eventually, with increasing gov corruption, your rights will go away too.
A bunch of reasons. First of all, there was a white paper that showed libertarians tend to have low otherness score https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424229/
Certain types of people just naturaly agree with libertariansm.
Ayn Rand who is suspected of suffering from aspergers, suffered under communism. This obviously affected her ideology allot, and made her the way she is. She then started preaching her ideology based on reason, not emotion.
A bunch of people could not see past her arguments, and started to believe libertarianism is the only right way, and that everything else is wrong. They can seldom bring themselves to do what they believe is immoral.
While other ideologies have a certain balance of the 5 types of moralities, libertarians only value freedom, and can't comprehend that people are different from them, and just don't value what they do.
Libertarianism misses the point that all our morals are made up anyway, and that we should just try to make morals serve life as best as possible.
This. Although its heartening that the birthplace of democracy is still managing to hodl. I guess this is another of French Revolution >> Murican Revolution.
This. French don't take any shit, will in Murica folks bend over and spread their ass cheeks for big business because the alternative is a visit from ~~hired thugs~~coos.
They've been pulling this shit for years and it is infuriating. I don't understand the magic math that leads to this being profitable, but somehow its working for the investors.
Just kicking a dog when its down
> I don't understand the magic math that leads to this being profitable
Yeah I don't get it. Are they still turning a profit by having a huge chunk of their residents move out upon the terms changing? Are people replacing them? Where are people coming from that they move into an overpriced mobile home rental?
It happens in san fran a lot for offices. A company buys several floors or an entire building and sits on it for 3 years, leaving it totally empty, and then its up for lease again. ????? Who is doing this? Who has the funds to do this??
You should really watch the John Oliver video on this but in a nutshell, these people can’t afford to move. A mobile home is often not really that mobile. It costs thousands of dollars to relocate it.
These people are essentially stuck. They own the home they live in, but not the land.
So many houses on Canada are sold like this. You own an expensive kleenex box and not 1 single cm² of land. I hate it :( source: someone who will never ever own a home but I like to fantasize on realtor.ca because I enjoy torturing myself
Mobile homes are rough because often the person will own the mobile home, but rent the land that the home is on. When the rent goes up, they have a choice of:
*paying the higher rent,
*paying to move the house to a new location (which is actually very expensive, if it's even possible; if someone installed a deck, for example, they'd have to take it down),
*try to sell the place (tough in a tight time frame, and the new owner will have to deal with the rising rent or moving the thing), or
*just abandon the house, along with any investment they have in it.
Maybe it used to make sense, but nowadays buying a home and renting land for it is a bad idea.
Berkshire owns the largest MH manufacturer, but is not involved in MH lots or leasing.
Pro Publica has an investigative piece on the issues with the manufacturer and John Oliver did a segment summarizing it.
Actually it’s insanely profitable because you just provide the lot with a few amenities and a road. Because it’s a manufactured home park, your taxes are low and the owners of the trailers pay taxes for their own trailers.
I think the magic math might be that the land is more valuable repurposed as something other than a mobile home park. You can't just kick the current leasees out though, so first, you have to drive them out with higher rent. Obviously, this won't be the case for all situations, but it is probably true for many of them. I imagine that in addition to an increase in rent, there are also decreases in the quality of services and maintenance (for the purpose of making the area less desirable to rent). Never underestimate how scummy people will act.
I disagree that this is a sign of collapse. This is people choosing home ownership instead of the subjugated position of renting from an all powerful landlord. Ownership avoids precariousness.
It would be more a sign of collapse if they were prevented from forming a coop. The way union formation is prevented.
Big reason I don't want a plurality of my net worth tied up in a single undiversified, immobile, destructible asset.
Ideally, my house would be 20% or less of my total net worth. Hard to do with housing prices being what they are.
Sure, but [a brush fire ended multi-million dollar homes in Boulder, Colorado as well.](https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/30/weather/colorado-wildfires/index.html)
This way, poor people can live somewhere nice.
The most horrifying story for me was something I saw in the NYT. A couple was being kicked out of a FEMA trailer they’d been living in for years, and the government was asking like $2500 a month from them, and they were of course unemployed and one of them was quadriplegic. The government was doing *nothing* to help them. Nothing.
I bought a $5k home in a cooperative.
I renovated it. I make 6 figures. Only way I’ll ever take a mortgage is for a lakefront house. I’m waiting for the bubble to pop and it will. Covid is over, WFH is being recalled. The flatlanders will have to go back to their urban hell holes eventually
I sit in the traffic in Boston daily to get gasoline from the terminals for NH. Every day since restrictions were lifted mid 2021 the traffic to the city has gotten worse than it was pre Covid so………
Wfh being recalled? Wtf. I work for a Fortune 500 and the talk has been expanding wfh and coming in to the office on purpose for a purpose. You’re delusional.
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Because I was young and poor and mobile homes were cheap at the time and it seemed like a good idea, I bought a double wide in 97 and put it on a rented lot thinking I could just move it when I could get some land. Here it still sits and the land owner has all but abandoned the place. It’s in an extremely desirable location in my area, an area which has seen significant development that doesn’t really fit for a mobile home park anymore, especially one the owner has essentially abandoned and is an eyesore. I feel like as soon as some developer makes him the right offer or the county we live in forces him out by deciding they suddenly care about inspections and compliance and making him take a lowball offer after being bribed by a developer, we will be in the position of being priced or forced out and then they keep the mobile home which is in excellent condition because we’ve maintained and upgraded it well and it looks very modern.
I’m just glad I know how to operate and have access to heavy equipment like bulldozers and backhoes. If I get forced out and have to start all over, I’m not leaving anything useable behind. I can’t legally burn it down, but I haven’t found anything that says I can’t crush it to the ground as long as it still belongs to me and I’m not filing fraudulent claims on it. If I can’t have it, neither can they. Small potatoes to them, but big potatoes to me. One of the ways they make money is confiscating your home when you can’t afford under conditions they create to stay in it or move it. Not this one.🖕
This is a great idea.
Trailers used to be a decent option for affordable living. A few of the parks around here were sold to corporate interests, and the cost to live in them is now almost comparable to buying a regular home. It's crazy.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/some_random_kaluna:
---
Submission Statement:
This is related to collapse because part of the collapse we're seeing throughout the world, is the widesale selling and destruction of people's homes from under them. Often the people in these homes are forced into new rental terms or end up becoming homeless. While this article centers on the United States and in particular the city of Portland in Oregon, it's heartening to see people unite and start pooling resources to obtain the land where they live, so they can keep living there.
While a third of total mobile home parks in the United States have already been sold to private corporations for limitless rent, expect to see (and help) people start up similar efforts where you live.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/12fu65c/mobile_home_park_residents_form_coops_to_save/jfh46co/
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