Manufactured Crisis: Losing the Nation’s Largest Source of Unsubsidized Affordable Housing

This article is republished from Shelterforce Magazine.

Derald Ketels sorts through a rumpled pile of late fee reminders, rent hike notifications, vehicle tow warnings, eviction notices, and other official-looking communication from his landlord. He’s lived in Hickory Village Mobile Home Park for 40-plus years, renting until he bought his single-wide in 1997, where he’s lived ever since. He raised his kids there. He’s now raising his two adolescent granddaughters in the same house, which he’s spent countless hours fixing up over the decades. Ketels paid his place off so long ago he’s not sure exactly when it was. These days, Ketels is unsure about several things—including whether he’ll be able to hang onto his home for much longer.

Derald Ketels has kept file of tow warnings, eviction notices, and other communications from his landlord, Havenpark Communities. The company, which operates more than 80 manufactured housing communities in the U.S., has faced complaints from residents, housing advocates, and even policymakers for its business practices. Staff photo by Shelby R. King

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, every warning and notice in Ketels’s stack of paperwork is dated 2021 or later—the year Hickory Village, a 204-space manufactured housing community on the north end of Fort Collins, Colorado—was sold to Havenpark Communities LLC.

Before the Utah-based manufactured housing owner and operator bought the property, rent increases were predictable and the amounts were sustainable. Property management was easy to get along with, Ketels says. He even worked for the park’s former owner in exchange for a discount in his lot rent—the monthly fee homeowners pay to site their home in the park, hook it up to utilities, and access community amenities.

But those days are long gone.

When Havenpark bought Hickory Village, lot rent was around $500 per month, according to a Colorado Public Radio story. By 2022, base rent for most of the folks living in Hickory Village ranged between $555 and $600 per month—except for Ketels, who was charged $795. Ketels complained, and in October 2024, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs ruled in his favor, determining he’d been subject to retaliatory rent increases because of a 2021 complaint he filed against Havenpark about utility fee disclosures (the department determined that complaint was unfounded). Havenpark was fined, instructed to reimburse Ketels for the excess rent he’d been charged, and told to align his rents with his neighbors’.

As of February 2025, Ketels hasn’t received any compensation from Havenpark, which is disputing the judgment. What he did get is another rent increase notice: $1,059 per month starting March 1.

Years of fighting Havenpark have been rough on Ketels, a septuagenarian who lives off his Social Security check. His adult son helps with money when he’s able, and the family gets food stamps. But at the rate Havenpark is increasing lot rents and utility fees, Ketels worries he won’t be able to afford Hickory Village much longer. And if that happens, he’ll lose his largest asset: his home.

“I’ll probably just have to leave it,” he says. “There’s no place to put it, and it’d cost me $15,000 to move it even if there was.”

Ketels faces the same dilemma many manufactured home owners have found themselves in recently: Even if he could afford to move his house, there’s a good chance he’d face a similar future in a different park.

Before Havenpark Communities bought Hickory Village Mobile Home Park in 2021, Ketels’s rent was around $600 per month. As of mid-2024, he’s paying nearly $980 including utilities, which eats up most of his Social Security check—his family’s only income source. Staff photo by Shelby R. King

Ketels’s situation is increasingly common in manufactured housing communities nationwide. At least a dozen homeowners from several parks who Shelterforce spoke with in the last two years say their lot rents and other housing-related fees skyrocketed after their communities were bought by investment companies. Many of these businesses, including Havenpark, have repeatedly been called out for rent gouging, strong-arming residents, and creating untenable rules. Dozens of media outlets have reported for years on lot rent increases and unchecked fee hikes at manufactured housing communities across the nation as ownership changes hands—often from small, family-run outfits to large out-of-state businesses. (That is, if the new owners keep the park open at all; over the years, dozens of parks have been purchased and closed, displacing entire communities at once.)

But none of this stops Havenpark or many other manufactured housing community owners with similar “acquire-and-improve” ownership strategies from taking credit for preserving housing affordability.

In an email to Shelterforce (the only on-the-record statement the company provided for this story), a Havenpark representative wrote that Havenpark follows all fair housing laws when processing and enforcing leases, adding that “each year we invest millions of dollars back into our properties to upgrade aging infrastructure such as water and lighting, improve curb appeal with new landscaping and new signage, and add amenities like dog parks, pickle ball courts, and clubhouses, among other ways we work to create enduring value while preserving affordability.”

But scores of residents, including Ketels, who under Havenpark ownership can barely afford homes they once thought they’d live in forever, wonder: preserving affordability for whom? 

Manufactured housing: Then and now

About 22 million Americans live in manufactured homes, which are the nation’s largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing. More commonly referred to as “mobile home parks” or “trailer parks,” manufactured housing communities typically attract older residents and those who have lower or fixed-incomes, like Ketels. While some residents rent their homes, many more own them.

Factory-built homes like these are more affordable than traditional single-family homes for many reasons. They’re cheaper to build, and therefore buy, partly due to logistics—smaller size, lower-priced materials, mass production, and reduced construction labor costs. As a result, brand-new manufactured houses list at less than $150,000, on average, and used ones can go for as little as a few grand—significantly less than a typical single-family home, which hit a nationwide median sales price of $420,400 in October 2024, according to data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Manufactured housing has also historically been more affordable because it’s sold separately from real estate—meaning owners don’t have to factor in the cost of land, although many do. In fact, nearly half of homeowners site their manufactured home on property they own, while 40 percent live on land they lease from a property owner.

And that’s where manufactured housing communities come in. Most of these communities were built decades ago by small mom-and-pop outfits and were often located on the outskirts of town or on otherwise lower-valued land, which kept prices down. (It’s worth mentioning that more nefarious factors also played a role in Americans’ opinion of manufactured homes, including classism, stigma around poverty, and “trailer trash” stereotypes, which kept them cheaper for decades while also pigeonholing them as inferior or substandard.)

But while the land-lease homeownership structure for so long provided an affordable path to purchase for many, that same contract type is today being weaponized against low-income residents. They’re able to afford a “cheap” manufactured housing unit, only to find themselves increasingly cost burdened by new and/or increasing fees, untenable rent increases, unpredictable rule changes, and other issues.

[Manufactured housing owners are] even more vulnerable than a traditional renter because they have their largest asset—all of their housing equity, and, for many of them, the bulk of their household wealth—installed on land they don’t own.”

Esther Sullivan, University of Colorado Denver

“In a sense, [manufactured housing owners are] even more vulnerable than a traditional renter because they have their largest asset—all of their housing equity, and, for many of them, the bulk of their household wealth—installed on land they don’t own,” says Esther Sullivan, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver whose research focuses on poverty, spatial inequality, housing, and the built environment.

Why is this happening? In the last decade, private-equity firms, real estate firms, and other types of investors and speculators have zeroed in on the industry. They’ve realized that manufactured housing communities are “a relatively untouched sector” that provides stable returns with low overhead costs, loose operating regulations, and lax enforcement of the protections that do exist.

Seeing the potential for big profits, private equity–backed companies in the mid 2010s began making multimillion-dollar, often multi-park, purchases of manufactured housing communities in several states. In fact, institutional investors accounted for 23 percent of manufactured housing community purchases in 2020 and 2021, up from 13 percent between 2017 and 2019, according to New York Times reporting. Three of the nation’s four largest private equity firms have manufactured housing communities in their investment portfolios. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy estimates that institutional investors purchased 800,000 lots between 2014 and 2022.

But therein lies one major problem: The data are just estimates. There is no definitive tally of how many manufactured housing lots have been bought and sold in the United States, because no one truly knows how many manufactured housing communities even exist, according to George W. “Mac” McCarthy, president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute. He calls the inventory issue “mind numbing.” Several incomplete maps exist, but when McCarthy’s team uses geospatial mapping to cross-reference other data, nothing lines up the way it should. “The problem that our people have is that in every state, the way they record manufactured housing communities is different,” he says. For example, “in some places, the whole community is listed as one piece of land. In other places, it’s all subdivided and listed as owned separately.”

This lack of reliable information makes it difficult to accurately track the industry shift from mostly mom-and-pop ownership to investor-owner dominated. But the data does show that many of today’s major players in the manufactured housing community industry were already powerful forces in the single-family residential sector. For example, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns the nation’s largest manufactured housing production company, and has since 2003. Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, and the Carlyle Group—three of the nation’s five largest private-equity firms—have all made enormous investments in manufactured housing communities. In 2020 alone, Blackstone dropped $550 million on 40 such communities in a business move that online real estate magazine TheRealDeal called “recession-proof.” Carlyle shelled out $230 million for four parks in Mesa, Arizona, the same year.

Ketels’s landlord, Havenpark, follows a business model that (so far) includes acquiring dozens of parks in multiple states and hiring local property managers to operate those parks. The company is owned and managed by Havenpark Capital Partners LLC, a private investment firm that specializes in manufactured housing community acquisition and ownership. Havenpark buys older, often-neglected manufactured housing communities where once-cheap land is fetching ever-higher prices.

Havenpark’s newly acquired communities are often due for upgrades—sometimes superficial and other times quite substantial (which is one reason their rents are typically below-market rate). It’s these improvements that trigger the rent increases—ostensibly to offset the cost of needed upgrades. In most states, annual (or more frequent) lot rent increases, unpredictable rule changes, and expensive maintenance requirements are the norm.

In many places, park owners can and do legally refuse to renew a lease without cause, even on a lot where the resident owns the home. Fran Quigley, a housing rights attorney and professor at Indiana University, has represented manufactured home owners fighting attempted evictions by multiple property management companies that refused to renew their leases. (Havenpark was not among the companies Quigley has met in court.)

Although the problem is clear, well documented, and worsening, few federal policies exist to protect manufactured housing community residents. The federal protections that do exist are weak, housing advocates argue, and who knows how they will fare in Trump’s administration. State-level rules to protect manufactured housing residents vary, and firms like Havenpark tend to purchase in places where protections are lacking, says Yvonne Maldonado, executive director of MHAction, a national nonprofit coalition of manufactured housing community residents.

“In many states, we don’t have protections for families in manufactured homes, so Havenpark and many other predatory real estate speculators are taking advantage of that,” she says. “Where there is no law, residents complain, and [the owners] turn around and basically say, ‘You don’t like it? Leave.’”

But just telling folks who live in manufactured housing to “move” or “leave” is unrealistic. Despite being called “mobile homes” for much of their existence, this type of housing isn’t easily movable—and a full one-third of it is too old to be legally moved. That means if a person owns their home but is evicted from their lot, they’ve got no choice but to abandon their home. To add to the indignity, the “abandoned” home can then be re-rented or re-sold by the property owner.

“The housing vulnerability of the residents is really part of the business model for many manufactured home community owners because a large part of their profit comes from increases in rents, increases in fees that they understand residents will be forced to tolerate because they can’t move their home,” Sullivan says. “It’s either extremely expensive to move or, oftentimes, it’s simply impossible to move because it’s structurally unsound.”

These homeowners are, in essence, a captive audience. And given the current housing shortage, as low-income tenants find themselves unable to afford higher lot rents and new fees, they’ll simply be replaced by renters who may be in a higher income bracket but who are no less vulnerable than the tenants before them, says Dave Anderson, executive director of the National Manufactured Home Owners Association.

“Every element of the housing market is under pressure, seeing upward scarcity and upward pressure in values,” he says. “People are being shifted out of buying single-family homes and into renting, and people are being shifted away from rental options they might have done in the past into manufactured housing, which they might not have considered before.”

Missing data, limited protection policies

Just how big is the problem? It’s impossible to know.

No system of tracking manufactured housing–specific tenant or ownership issues exists. Comprehensive information about the number of parks sold or closed each year also doesn’t exist, nor does a roster of the homeowners who’ve been evicted. No one knows how many communities have been sold to private-equity firms, real estate investment firms, and other types of investors. None of the experts Shelterforce spoke with while reporting this story could point toward a single source for mapping and tracking manufactured housing community transactions.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data website with a national tally of manufactured housing communities, but Sullivan’s team determined that it’s “highly inaccurate,” she wrote in an email. “It fails to record some parks and includes many non-park uses (like storage facilities and semi-truck parking lots).” DHS did not return requests for comment.

Though national data isn’t available, data published by Eileen Divringi from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in June 2024 reports on these types of communities in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Divringi and her team’s findings echoed years of complaints from park residents all over the country: The land-lease model is ripe for exploitation, leaving low-income residents at great risk of displacement and facing diminished wealth-building potential compared to traditional homeownership methods.

Manufactured housing communities are our last source of affordable housing, and it’s becoming unaffordable for many, many families.”

Yvonne Maldonado, MHAction

Even without complete data at the national level, the situation is alarming enough that it’s drawn intense scrutiny from residents, housing activists, legislators, and policymakers. For instance, in 2019, Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote a letter questioning Havenpark and other firms about “their use of predatory practices to boost profits in the communities they own.” Havenpark co-managing partners J. Anthony Antonelli (who died in 2024) and Robison “Robbie” Pratt (Antonelli’s son-in-law) issued a statement in response to the lawmakers’ letter reiterating their commitment to preserving affordable housing.

The letter claims that in two cases if they hadn’t purchased specific parks themselves, they “almost assuredly would have been sold to a developer that would have closed those communities.” The letter claimed that given market prices, Havenpark had no choice but to raise rents, and noted that despite rent increases, “these two communities provide among the most affordable units in their respective markets.”

Residents must be able to afford their home, but they aren’t averse to all rent increases. For example, when Hickory Village went up for sale, many residents committed willingly to bumping up their monthly payments to around $950 over the course of five years—if it meant they could buy the park. A contingent of Hickory Village residents organized a collective purchase effort, and got some traction in an ambitious scramble to buy Hickory Village, but Havenpark outbid them.

Colorado is one of several states that passed a tenant opportunity to purchase (TOPA) law, which gives tenants the first right to purchase their manufactured housing community when it goes on the market. Had they been successful, the lot rent increase would have been a stiff jump for most of the residents—but it would have been gradual and, more importantly, they would have benefited in perpetuity from the protections, stability, and agency that ownership provides.

Although the affordability and displacement issues are well known, the ongoing scrutiny hasn’t produced much protective action. In 2021, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) implemented rules that require manufactured housing community owners to give 30 days’ notice to residents before increasing rents, among other protections. Those rules aren’t strong enough, says Caroline Nagy, senior policy counsel for housing at the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. FHFA’s protections only apply to borrowers who use government-backed loans, meaning a huge chunk of buyers with access to private equity aren’t subject to the rules. Also problematic: The rules only apply to transactions closed after the announcement was made.

More importantly, the 30-day notice doesn’t protect tenants from unchecked rent increases. “FHFA, Fannie Mae, Freddie—they’re still unwilling to impose rent increase restrictions as a condition of financing, and I don’t really think you can have meaningful tenant protections without that,” Nagy says. “Because if you can increase someone’s rent, if you can double someone’s rent for no reason at all, then you can evict people freely.”

While TOPA laws certainly help in states that have them, buying a park is an enormous undertaking—one that doesn’t always work out. Residents must organize, agree, and fundraise quickly, securing millions of dollars from lenders and investors in a short time and under immense pressure. In Colorado, for example, Ketels’s neighbors worked with Thistle Community Housing, a nonprofit that helps residents buy their communities, to access Colorado’s TOPA law, in their bid to buy their park. But the law only requires owners to prioritize “good faith” consideration of resident offers; it didn’t require them to choose the residents’ offer over Havenpark’s higher one.

“Manufactured housing communities are our last source of affordable housing, and it’s becoming unaffordable for many, many families,” MHAction’s Maldonado says. “The business models of Havenpark and many others are targeting the most vulnerable people—our seniors, our veterans, our low-income families. This is a crisis.”

Havenpark: “One of the most aggressive”

Even amid an ever-expanding pool of profit-seeking buyers, Havenpark stands out, says Paul Bradley, former president of ROC USA, a nonprofit that helps residents organize to purchase their manufactured housing communities.

“There are hundreds of private-equity buyers trying to build individual parks and portfolios,” he says. “But Havenpark over the last four or five years has been one of the most aggressive.”

And it’s no wonder why: The business model has been incredibly successful. Founded just eight years ago, Havenpark today operates 80-plus manufactured housing communities with more than 22,000 homesites. It’s privately owned, so the company’s assets, debts, and value aren’t publicly available, but Havenpark closed 6,000 deals between 2019 and 2021. Its revenue comes in at just more than $27 million per year, according to one estimate.

Havenpark claims it invests heavily in its newly acquired properties, many of which are aging and have not been well maintained by previous owners. Because these communities were typically developed by private owners, often 30 years ago or longer, their infrastructure—i.e., roads, sewers, and electrical—aren’t on city or county systems. Instead they’ve often been privately maintained on a shoestring budget by the property owner. By the time Havenpark buys them, the properties are often in need of major updates. “We’ll pour in a lot of capital in the first few years and on an ongoing basis to kind of raise the profile and quality of the community,” Pratt said in a 2023 interview with HousingWire.

Havenpark also tries to distinguish itself as an agent of social betterment; it sponsors scholarships and won a humanitarian award in 2023, for example. The company trumpets both its neighborhood improvement projects and its commitment to providing affordable ownership and rental opportunities. Havenpark invested $35 million in its parks in 2023, according to the company website. Pratt also insists the improvements and accompanying rent increases are not only for the betterment of the parks, they’re largely welcomed by many of the locals.

Shea and Heather Henke at home in Hickory Village Mobile Home Park in Fort Collins, Colorado. Staff photo by Shelby R. King

“I don’t think anybody wants a kind of, quote, trailer park,” Pratt told HousingWire. “The city doesn’t want it. The administrators don’t want it. Politicians don’t want it. The neighbors across the street don’t want it. I don’t really think investors want it. And I don’t think our residents want it.”

In interviews, Pratt touts Havenpark communities as an affordable homeownership option. But he fails to specify who they’re affordable for. Havenpark’s Hickory Village is no longer affordable for Ketels. And it’s becoming increasingly less affordable for Shea and Heather Henke, who own a single-wide in Hickory Village. They, too, say they’ve watched their lot rent creep up while services degraded. In 2021, before Havenpark bought the park, the Henkes’ lot rent was $555. It’s increased each year since, according to documents shared with Shelterforce. Starting in February 2025, they’ll be paying $856 per month, a total increase of 54 percent since Havenpark took over. (Havenpark in an email told Shelterforce rents have only increased 35 percent at Hickory Park since the company took over, and that Havenpark’s total investment into the park has been greater than the amount collected via rent increases.)

When asked if he felt Havenpark completed capital improvements dramatic enough to justify the rent increases, Shea Henke wrote in an email that Havenpark had resurfaced the roads and completed a significant tree trimming project, “but those were years ago, and I believe were budgeted into the purchase price. Earlier this year they finally finished installing streetlights mandated by the city after a year of delays, and they are working on the outdated water infrastructure.” The Henkes’ home and the homes around theirs had the water lines fully replaced in 2024. “So, they are partially addressing infrastructure needs, at least,” he wrote, adding that he and his wife feel they’re at an advantage compared to some of their neighbors—they’re both employed, educated, and empowered to advocate for themselves. “We’re in a financial position not a lot of our neighbors are in,” Heather says. But they’ve watched others at Hickory Village struggle since Havenpark took over.

And many of the Henkes’ neighbors, like Ketels, say their services have degraded since Havenpark took over, despite the company’s capital improvements. It’s worth noting that Hickory Village, like many manufactured housing communities, isn’t serviced by municipal utilities. Electricity, water, and sewer services are billed to the property owner, which then charges residents as part of their lot rent or as added service fees. Because of this, roads in mobile home parks aren’t maintained by the local government, nor are signage and lighting.

It’s not just Hickory Village. Havenpark horror stories from other properties are easy to find. In fact, a 1,000-plus­–member “Stop Haven Park” Facebook group serves as a forum for people who live in Havenpark communities to air grievances, ask questions, and get advice from one another.

Gary Devereaux is part of that Facebook group. He fought Havenpark for years after the company bought Meadowlark Mobile Home Park in Billings, Montana, alleging that the company failed to fix the community’s aging water infrastructure—which was already deteriorating when Havenpark bought Meadowlark in 2020. Devereaux documented months of coffee-colored water full of sludge coming from his faucets; he filed a class action lawsuit in 2022. Havenpark denied any negligence or wrongdoing, noting that the EPA had found the water potable and that the water system was fixed as of 18 months ago. The company also pointed out that residents were not charged for water while the system was being fixed. The parties settled via court-ordered mediation and the settlement is confidential. Devereaux has since moved.

Even Stop Haven Park’s founder and administrator, Carla Hill, gave up. In the first three years with Havenpark as her landlord at Cherry Creek Mobile Home Park, also in Billings, Montana, Hill’s rent went from $425 per month in 2020, including water and garbage, to about $540 per month by the time her family moved away in August 2023. As of January 2025, one five-year Cherry Creek resident pays $643 per month for lot rent (including water and garbage), up from $485 in 2023.

MHAction’s Maldonado claims that in states without rent increase rules, she’s seen Havenpark increase rents by 50 percent. “They tell you it’s affordable,” she says. “Once you’re in, they start tacking on extra fees.” (A Havenpark representative in an email stated the company denies increasing rents by 50 percent upon purchase at any of its properties, and that it abides by all fair housing rules.)

Havenpark residents who want to move out have found it difficult to leave on their own terms. When Hill sold her home to an acquaintance, she says the property manager first told her the buyer didn’t qualify to live in the park. When the buyer called the office to clear up the issue, Hill says the property manager tried to sell him a different home in the park. When asked about this transaction, the Havenpark representative wrote in an email that all potential residents are subject to a standard lease application process, which park management conducts in accordance with fair housing laws, and that Hill’s accusations of the management trying to sell the applicant a different home were unsubstantiated.

“Havenpark believes in continuous improvement, and we are always open to feedback from our residents, without retaliation,” the representative wrote in an official statement. When asked about the Colorado Department of Labor Affairs’ retaliation determination and demand that the company reimburse Ketels, the representative replied only that the case “remains ongoing” and declined to provide additional details. Ketels says Havenpark is disputing the decision.

But these accusations about Havenpark’s tactics don’t surprise Alexander Kornya, an attorney and the former director of litigation at Iowa Legal Aid (ILA). Kornya began getting complaints about Havenpark around 2019, when the company bought its first property in Iowa. The state’s protections for manufactured housing residents at the time were weak, allowing the company to initially notify some residents that their rent was going to increase by 70 percent almost immediately. (Havenpark backed off following a media outcry.)

While at ILA, Kornya worked with about two dozen Havenpark residents who alleged the company included provisions in its leases that didn’t adhere to state code. He has since left ILA. Although a representative for the firm could not share additional information, citing attorney-client privilege, they supported Kornya’s legal expertise. (It should be noted that including lease provisions that don’t adhere to state rules is common—usually followed at the end of the lease by a provision declaring that anything not conforming to state law is void, leaving tenants unsure which parts of their leases are enforceable. Havenpark in an emailed statement reiterated that it follows all fair housing laws.)

Kornya called Havenpark’s leases “massive,” confusing, and often rife with provisions that he believed were legally unenforceable. “Every time they would propose a new lease, we would have these community meetings where we would basically point out all the things that were wrong with the lease,” he says.  

Considering all the ongoing problems and uncertainty Ketels continues to deal with from the management at Hickory Village, he’s flat refusing to sign a new lease. He’s barely scraping enough together for rent each month and bracing for the big jump to $1,059 per month. “We’re still hanging in there,” he says. “But it’s just going to keep going up. It could be $50. It could be $150.”