They Own Their Homes—So Why Are Mobile Park Residents Still Getting Evicted?

Yahoo

28-07-2025

Mobile home parks have long been one of the last bastions of affordable housing in America. For millions of residents, they offer the dream of homeownership at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing.
But that dream comes with a catch: Residents typically own the structure, but not the land beneath it. That legal distinction leaves them vulnerable. Despite being homeowners, they can still be evicted under landlord-tenant laws, sometimes for falling just a few hundred dollars behind on rent.
This vulnerability hasn't gone unnoticed. As real estate investors increasingly buy up mobile home parks, evictions are rising. In Florida, eviction filings jump by 40% in the months after a park is sold, according to research from Princeton's Eviction Lab.
Nearly 22 million Americans live in these communities. Some are retirees, others are working families, but all face a troubling question: How can you own your home and still be forced to leave it?
Why homeownership can still mean eviction
Unlike traditional homeowners, who generally can't be removed without a lengthy foreclosure process, mobile home owners can face eviction with fewer legal protections.
'Speed is really a critical element here,' says Jacob Haas, senior research specialist at the Eviction Lab and co-author of a report on mobile park evictions.
Evictions typically begin with a notice after a missed lot rent payment—sometimes after just a month. If the issue isn't resolved, the landlord can file a court case in as little as five days in Florida, compared with the months it takes for a foreclosure proceeding.
'But past research has found that giving tenants more time in the eviction process reduces eviction activity dramatically in a given area,' Haas says. 'Doing something, for example, like increasing the eviction filing fee for a landlord or property manager—that also reduces eviction activity dramatically.'
Without that friction, though, some mobile park owners have 'perverse incentive' to evict homeowners.
'Because if they can evict the current residents from a mobile home in their park, then they can rent it out and make more money,' Haas says, referencing legal aid work that's been done in Michigan.
The result is a system that gives mobile home owners all the obligations of ownership with few of the protections, and the consequences are playing out in real time.
In Florida alone, mobile home owners faced an eviction rate of 1.5% per year—triple the foreclosure rate for traditional homeowners, according to the Eviction Lab's analysis of more than 60,000 eviction filings in mobile home parks between 2012 and 2022. And yet, despite facing more risk, they're often granted fewer protections than homeowners in conventional housing.
In some regions of the state, annual eviction rates in parks exceeded 6%.
When the park gets sold, residents get displaced
When a park is sold, mass evictions spike, putting even the longest-standing residents at risk.
These parks are often targeted for redevelopment because the land underneath them is worth far more than the income generated from modest lot rents. In Florida, eviction filings jump by 40% in the months following a park's sale, according to the Eviction Lab's research.
Even if their land is not targeted for redevelopment, residents are vulnerable to dramatic rent increases after sales.
At Portside at the Beaches, a manufactured home community near Jacksonville Beach, residents were hit with a 30% rent increase just months after a sale to RHP Properties, the nation's largest owner of mobile home parks.
One resident, Dylan Olson, told News4JAX that his lot rent jumped by $258 a month with no improvements to the park's infrastructure.
'It just seems like they're, you know, taking from people that can't afford it,' Olson said, noting the size of the corporation. He began organizing neighbors to legally petition the rent hike under Florida law, collecting signatures to trigger mediation with the new owner.
While some new owners promise to keep parks affordable, stories like Olson's show how quickly that can change. For residents, it's a precarious reality: You might own your home, but you can still be priced out or evicted when the land changes hands.
The financial and emotional toll of being forced out
When facing eviction, mobile home owners are often left with three options: abandon their home, sell it for far below its value, or attempt relocation—which can be prohibitively expensive, costing up to $15,000 in some cases.
Each option represents a blow that's not only financial but also deeply personal. Many residents have lived in their homes for decades, poured time and money into maintaining them, and built communities around them.
It's important to note that while the examples in this article focus on Florida, this is happening across the country. We just have the best data in Florida, thanks to Eviction Lab's partnership with Shimberg Center for Housing Studies, which collected data on more than 60,000 eviction cases in the state.
Ownership doesn't have to come with this much risk
Florida's Mobile Home Act offers residents a few modest protections such as longer notice periods before eviction and limits on the reasons a landlord can force someone out. But these safeguards often fall short in practice, especially when residents face rising lot rents or park sales.
The state also offers a relocation assistance program, but it can be difficult to access. Funding is limited, and the help rarely covers the full cost of moving a home. And in many parts of the country that are similary affected by this problem, those protections and resources are nonexistent.
For millions of low- and fixed-income Americans, mobile homes offer one of the last affordable paths to homeownership. But the way most mobile home parks are structured today leaves residents vulnerable to the very instability they sought to escape.
When you don't own the land beneath your home, your future is never fully secure. A missed rent payment, a change in ownership, or a decision not to renew your lease can all lead to eviction—even if your home is paid off. It's a contradiction at the heart of this housing model: You can 'own' your home—and still lose everything.
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