Report details life in mobile home communities owned by outside entities

Yahoo

10-05-2025

princeton – Mobile home communities, also known as trailer parks, are facts of life around West Virginia and throughout the nation, but a report compiled by two nonprofit organizations with help from Mercer County residents argues that out-of-state owners are making these parks less than desirable places to live.
In February 2023, Mountain State Justice, a statewide nonprofit legal services and advocacy organization, announced they filed a lawsuit in Mercer County Circuit Court on behalf of the residents in five manufactured housing communities against an out-of-state private equity firm and its affiliates.
The lawsuit's defendants, Smith Management LLC and Homes of America LLC, had purchased five manufactured home communities in Mercer County, according to court documents. The communities include Gardner Estates, Elk View, Country Roads, Delaney and Shadow Wood. The firm has purchased several manufactured housing communities in Mercer County and surrounding areas, in many cases more than doubling the lot rent rates residents were paying. The lawsuit cited problems including faulty sewer systems, standing water and insect problems.
Two nonprofit organizations, Human Impact Partners and Manufactured Housing Action, released a report May 6 titled 'Home Sick: Uncovering the health harms of Homes of America's manufactured housing communities.'
Valeria Steele, a resident organizer at Elk View Estates and the West Virginia Rights Project, worked on the 66-page report along with Will Dominie, Housing Justice Program Director, Human Impact Partners and Paul Terranova, Midwest Community Organizer, Manufactured Housing Action.
According to the report, Homes of America and West Virginia residents came to a settlement for the lawsuit in 2024, with court approval expected in 2025. As part of the settlement, Homes of America denied any wrongdoing, but agreed to comply with all applicable West Virginia laws and regulations, including habitability laws. Homes of America also agreed to:
• Provide lease agreements to those residents who remained in the lawsuit with a comparable lease as provided to others, including the opportunity for lower rent and credit for overcharges.
• Improve processes for rent payment, including refunds for inadvertent late fees.
• Allow (and not further hinder) residents' efforts to organize with one another or seek outside assistance.
In a separate settlement, Homes of America agreed to withdraw a lawsuit against resident and community organizer Valeria Steele for organizing and educating residents about rental lease agreements, according to the report.
Steele said a settlement was reached on Dec. 13, 2024 and the hope is that the agreement will go before the circuit court within three weeks for approval.
'My biggest takeaway is that it took a lot of interaction amongst the communities to be resilient to last through this. It proves that if you organize, it does make a difference,' Steele said. 'If we hadn't shared information about what was going on, if people hadn't gotten together, it (the lawsuit) wouldn't have gotten off. … Don't be afraid to act. It's your right.'
Steele later said that units at her park have been left empty. Some properties which were empty when the problems started in October 2022 have never been rented.
'The sad thing is it's kind of a hollow victory because the properties are ruined,' she said. 'The properties are almost empty. Elk View has only about nine now.'
Residents of other Mercer County parks purchased by Homes of America also said conditions have deteriorated.
'They [Homes of America] have made it so miserable for us. We used to love to come home. This was our home. We thought we could live here until we died and our life is so miserable, so miserable. This place has ruined our life, our health, and our future,' Barry Yost, a Shadow Wood Mobile Home Park resident, said in the report.
Homes of America LLC now owns at least 144 manufactured home communities, most of which are in Florida, Michigan and Illinois, according to the report.
Homes of America LLC did not reply to a Bluefield Daily Telegraph request for comment.
Dominie said that Human Impact Partners is a national nonprofit organization which works to transform the public health fild and build power with grassroots social justice movements. Human Impact Partners has a longterm partnership with Manufacturing Housing Action, recently worked on the issue of corporate landlords and health.
'And I think in that research we really sought to understand and show the ways in which the corporate investors model prioritizes profit over human needs and the needs of housing and leads to a number of issues like neglect, upkeep, evictions, rent hikes, tax evasion, dodging accountability and influencing policy and kind of rigging the rules,' Dominie said. 'We had already done that research with them and they started telling us about this campaign with the residents of Homes of America-owned manufactured housing communities.'
While these residence are often called mobile homes, their owners cannot easily leave a community when the rent for a home lot increases, Dominie said.
'It does leave people captive to more exploitive practices,' he said.
Paul Terranova, Midwest Community Organizer, Manufactured Housing Action, said his nonprofit organization supports residents in those communities work for better living conditions. About two years ago, Manufactured Housing Action and Human Impact Partners started getting phone calls and emails from people whose parks had been purchased by buyers they could not identify. The only hint was a New Jersey mailing address at the end of residents' leases.
'But we started seeing the same address from a bunch of different parks where people were having problems,' Terranova said.
Terranova said he has visited between 30 to 35 manufactured housing parks in Michigan and Illinois that have had the same problems.
'What I hear residents talk about is that when things go wrong either nothing is done or, you know, something less than the absolute minimum is done,' he said. 'I think people tend to believe that their communities are allowed to deteriorate.'
Terranova said it's hoped that the report will highlight the situations residents locally and across the country face when their parks are bought out by outside companies.
'One of the main things is raising awareness among local officials who may not realize that this local mobile home park is part of a much bigger problem,' he said. 'They're under attack by a much bigger set of forces.'
Local governments and local building inspectors do have authority to hold companies accountable for building codes, Terranova said.
'I think the other thing is also educating state legislators so they realize that the seniors and veterans and disabled folks in their communities are themselves being attacked by the Wall Street predators,' he said. 'This cuts across ideology and party lines. When you go into the manufactured housing communities whether the area they are in is deep red, deep blue, deep purple, people are being hurt from every political persuasion and walk of life.'
In the report, the organizations and park residents make several recommendations for improving conditions. These recommendations include:
• Strengthen housing standards to keep residents safe in their homes: Pass and enforce strong housing standards like licensing requirements, regular inspections, and accountability mechanisms to ensure homes are safe and habitable.
• Protect residents from exploitation: Pass rent regulations and good-cause eviction policies, and prohibit retaliation and unfair or discriminatory practices.
• Promote and resource community-friendly ownership: Provide funding and pass policies that enable residents to transition from corporate to community-friendly models of ownership.
• Address the root cause by limiting corporate speculation: Enact protective zoning regulations, impose portfolio caps, divest resources, and increase taxes on speculative investments to deter corporate profiteering.
'Home Sick: Uncovering the health harms of Homes of America's manufactured housing communities' can be read by going to https://humanimpact.org/hipprojects/home-sick/ on the internet.
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