I was pretty impressed with the fact that the article was willing to shed any positive light on Frank. When it comes to housing, income, and employment, the bulk of the media is very anti-investor.
I tend to agree with Brad's response that it was balanced on the slightly anti-capitalist side. Key points of positivity though:
- There’s some nobility in the Rolfe-Reynolds business model. The parks they take over tend to be in lousy shape, and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing them up. In that way, they’re the trailer-park equivalent of the developer who buys abandoned properties in the Bronx and converts them into livable places that are, at least, clean and safe.
- With around 10,000 lots scattered mostly across the Midwest and the Central Plains, Rolfe and Reynolds are about equivalent in size to a public-housing agency in a midsize city — and in an important way, they play the same role. Those living in public housing are generally required to pay up to 30 percent of their household income as their share of the rent. Rolfe and Reynolds’s tenants pay on average closer to 20 percent. And unlike the civil servants working for a housing agency, their managers know they must enforce the rules or they’re out. “We go through managers like crazy,” Rolfe says.
I think a key point to glean is that Frank is clearly shown as offering a superior product to a government provider (something that nobody on this forum would be shocked by). This is something that does not get said lightly in the New York Times. Clearly the journalist had a bit of an 'ah hah' moment.