Comedian John Oliver on Mobile Home Perils

[Wendy Black]

This made me cringe...

We've got mobiles rented in NorCal by people of very modest means and have been mindful of that.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/john-oliver-mobile-home-rent-rolfe-last-week-tonight.html

[Frank Rolfe]

John Oliver is not a newscaster, he's a comedian.

Not sure how I went from the New York Times calling me "the best thing going in affordable housing at a time when the nation's need for low-cost places to live has never been greater" in 2014 to being the brunt of a roasting from a comic on HBO, since we haven't changed our business model in over 20 years.

The truth is that when you upgrade and invest millions of dollars in old mobile home parks, the rent has to go up significantly. It's either that or simply bulldoze them and sell the land for a higher use. This is no different than when apartments, hotels or any other asset is redeveloped. And, in the same vein, there's no doubt that some residents will be displaced. But the vast majority of residents are happy to pay more rent for a nicer place to live.

With the median apartment rent in the U.S. standing at $1,200 per month and the median single-family home at $1,450, it's hard to believe that any sane person would consider the median lot rent in the U.S. incredibly high at $285 per month. If a 5% per year rent increase sounds too high -- which is about normal at most parks and equates to about $15 per month -- then can somebody explain to me how anything from Obamacare to cable TV rates are survivable?

Don't get your facts from a HBO satire show. If you are really interested in affordable housing, do some factual research. The reason that so many private equity groups are quietly buying mobile home parks is that it's probably the best business model on earth. It took the industry 60 years to get in this position, and it gutted out some terrible decades to come out on top in terms of providing the least expensive detached dwelling in the U.S. at the very moment that our country's housing market priced nearly 50% of the population out of the ability to be a homeowner. I didn't create these market forces, I simply invest in them.