Big money investors and private equity firms, continuing to buy up affordable mobile home parks, are spiking rents for low-income and working-class Americans.
Americans across New York, Iowa, Minnesota, and Montana are detailing how Wall Street-linked firms have driven up their rents while cutting their services after buying the mobile home parks where they live.
The Associated Press (AP) reports:
“All they care about is raising the rent because they only care about the money,” said Jeremy Ward, 49, who gets by on just over $1,000 a month in disability payments after his legs suffered nerve damage in a car accident. [Emphasis added]
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The plight of residents at Ridgeview is playing out nationwide as institutional investors, led by private equity firms and real estate investment trusts and sometimes funded by pension funds, swoop in to buy mobile home parks. Critics contend mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are fueling the problem by backing a growing number of investor loans. [Emphasis added]
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George McCarthy, president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based think tank, said parks containing about a fifth of mobile home lots nationwide have been purchased by institutional investors over the past eight years. [Emphasis added]
A resident of an Iowa mobile home park, bought up by Havenpark Communities, said his rent and fees to live have nearly doubled over the last two years. Another resident at a park bought by Impact Communities said their rent has increased 87 percent in just four years.
The same is occurring in Minnesota where mobile home park residents said their rents have increased by up to 30 percent as private equity firms from other states have increased their buying of parks from 46 percent in 2015 to 81 percent in 2021.
In Montana, a resident of a mobile home park bought by Havenpark Communities said her rent every month increased from $117 to $400 in less than two years.
Breitbart News has chronicled the rise of investors and private equity firms linked to Wall Street buying mobile home parks, entire neighborhoods, and tons of single-family housing — often out-bidding would-be first-time homeowners for properties.
In Rutherford County, Georgia, for example, officials estimate that about 1-in-10 homes are now owned by private equity firms or investors rather than individual residents.
In a neighborhood in La Vergne, Tennessee, an investment firm owns 19 homes in a single neighborhood. The homes were once affordable $200,000 homes for middle-class families. Now, they’re renting for about $2,000 a month.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.