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MCCARTHY: And what's ironic about it is that one of the missions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is to help preserve affordable housing. MCCARTHY: They provide very, very low-cost debt for these investors to get enough cash out to go buy additional parks.ĪRNOLD: The loans have supercheap interest rates because they're guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed entities at the heart of the U.S. And often, these loans are backed by the U.S. They pull out, say, $3 million, and they use that to go buy another mobile home park. So they can now borrow more money against it, kind of like when you refi your house and get cash out of the deal. A company raises rates and fees in a park. And he says what's really troubling to him is that the government is basically turbocharging this trend. GEORGE MCCARTHY: When private investors come to buy parks, very often they raise the cash flow by increasing rents sometimes 20-, sometimes 50-, sometimes 70%.ĪRNOLD: George McCarthy is president of the nonprofit Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. And charging hundreds or thousands of people like Mary more money can add up to bigger profits. Big investors are swooping in to buy them up. A lot of mom and pops who've been running mobile home parks for decades, they're retiring, looking to sell. And when NPR pressed Havenpark, the company said it wouldn't evict her or other residents waiting for that help.īut Mary Hunt's story is happening all over the country. She applied for pandemic rental assistance money. In Mary's case, it looks like she's going to be OK for now. I could be out next week without a place to live.ĪRNOLD: Havenpark wouldn't do an interview but said in a statement that, starting last year, they don't raise monthly lot rent more than $50 in a year and they charge the fair market rent for an area. And there won't be anything I can do about it. HUNT: What's going to happen is I'm going to go with (crying) what I have on my back pretty much, and everything will go to the road. When we spoke with Mary earlier this summer, she was running out of options. And the company filed an eviction case against her. And then earlier this year, Mary got sick with COVID and fell behind on the rent. It costs $5,000 to $10,000 to move a mobile home. We can't take a partial payment.ĪRNOLD: Mary couldn't just move her home. HUNT: I went in and said OK, well, you know, I've got this money right now. HUNT: Water's about 35, something like that.ĪRNOLD: Then there's the sewer fee, the trash fee, the administration fee. And Havenpark raised that to more than $400 and then tacked on new monthly fees. She says a few years ago her lot rent was less than $350 a month. And it's been buying up mobile home parks across a bunch of different states. I take it down, no problem.ĪRNOLD: But then the park was bought up by a real estate investment firm called Havenpark Communities. I'll bring the rest, you know, next week or whatever. I would call up and say, hey, look, I've got half the rent. HUNT: Stan and Nancy were the ones before. And when money was tight, the couple that managed the park lived right here. And the thing about mobile home parks is that even if you own your house outright, which Mary does, you still have to pay rent on the little plot of land that it sits on. She makes just $10 an hour driving people to doctor's visits. I've lived here almost 35 years.ĪRNOLD: Hunt's 51. MARY HUNT: It's a double-wide, so there is a lot of room. Others, like Mary's, are more like trailers up on foundations. There are something like 120 mobile or manufactured homes here.
A few years ago, it was bought up by one of these big companies. NPR's Chris Arnold reports for our Planet Money team.ĬHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Mary Hunt lives in a mobile home park in Swartz Creek, Mich. And the government is helping them do it. They raise fees and rents for the land under these homes and then evict people who can't pay. But some investors are buying up mobile home parks. Millions of Americans live in mobile home parks because they're the most affordable way for them to keep a roof over their heads.
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