When private equity firms buy mobile home parks, rent increases leave residents with few affordable options in rural areas

Roughly 20 million Americans live in manufactured houses, which are homes made in factories.

Although they’re often called mobile homes or trailers, that’s really a misnomer because their owners can’t easily relocate them. Typically, the people who own them rent the land underneath the houses from the owners of manufactured home parks. Sometimes, an owner will rent their home to someone else while paying to rent the land as well.

Manufactured homes tend to be far more affordable than other single-family homes because they have lower upfront and monthly expenses. A typical one costs around US$120,000; smaller ones, known as single-wides, cost around $87,000...

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Leo's notes: Manufactured housing is one of the few naturally occurring affordable homeownership opportunities available in rural America, yet it remains largely overlooked in housing policy discussions. As communities search for solutions to housing shortages, preserving existing affordable housing stock—including manufactured home communities—may be just as important as building new units. The challenge highlights a broader reality: housing affordability depends not only on the cost of the home itself, but also on the long-term stability of the land and infrastructure that support it.

Ken Notes: We need new rules for manufactured housing, neighborhoods, and development. While smaller lots are good we need to remove the profiteering owners from calling the shots. We need communities to buy and develop sites for manufactured housing, install the infrastructure, create security, develop amenities, approve architecture, create neighborhoods and integrate these into the larger community. Leo and I can show you dozens of examples where this is working but it does take planning, education, and the ability to work together.