Part 1 of 2 Opinion: The Changing World of Investor Owned Mobile Home Parks

In the past, Manufactured Home Parks (MHP) have been primarily family owned operations. Recently, there has been a new trend and Corporate investors have found they are now the most robust form of real estate available today. That's when the lives of homeowners living in investor owned parks changed. Ron Paulick and I, Cindy Newman have opinions regarding this new type of MHP. We would like to share them with you. We are both pro-development. However, we oppose the 9-Blessings LLC Mobile Home Park (MHP) development that was addressed previously in the Great Falls Gazette on September 7, 2025. I will offer part 1 and Ron will follow with part 2. I am giving my opinions from the perspective of a manufactured homeowner. I have leased land in the Highwoods MHP for 25 years. The first 20 years, our park was owned by a family landowner. Our on-site -manager took care of problems as they arose and maintained the park beautifully. We were happy! In 2020 a private equity investment group bought our park along with 6 others in Montana and our lives and housing security changed drastically. Again, my views here are based on these experiences. First and foremost is the fact that when you place your home on property someone else owns, in Montana, you have very few laws protecting you. Immediately, our out-of-state investor landowners began big rent increases, uncoupling water, sewer & trash pick up, adding on new fees and decreasingmaintenance and upkeep. It became evident we have no power to resolve problems. We were told, “you don't tell us, we tell you”! By abusing the power they have over us, our once affordable homes are not affordable anymore and our communities are becoming derelict. Manufactured homeowners lease the small piece of land our homes sit on. In 2020 our lot rent was $275 a month, with the new corporate landowners, new residents now pay $875 a month when you add in all the new fees. All amenities are gone, owners are in another state and managers come and go. Good luck if the sewer backs up or a water main breaks! I will add that manufacturedhomeowners have all the same expenses as a site built home. Homeowners insurance, property taxes, maintenance and upkeep of our homes and yards. Again, until 2020 we were not aware that we homeowners have very few legal protections in Montana. I talked to an attorney who told me our only recourse was to talk to our legislators and ask for better state-level laws. For 3 biennial legislative sessions we unsuccessfully attempted this. Montana laws favor the landowner For this reason, mobile home parks are targets for investor ownersbecause they know there is no oversight or guardrails in place to protect the homeowners We face a David versus Goliath situation that we can neither win nor afford. Please know too that 80% of us are retired seniors, 7 in 10 rely on a single, fixed income and 1 in 3 have a disability. Manufactured homes are mostly NOT mobile and even if they could move, it is costly. In conclusion, Yes, more affordable housing is needed but are these investor groups providing that?Investor owners are rapidly buying up existing affordable housing stock, pricing seniors out of their homes and extracting huge sums of money. They all propose to offer affordable housing but as others have stated, this is just not “penciling out”! Signed by: Cindy Newman, Ron Paulick*The Planning Advisory Board/Zoning meeting is Oct. 14, addressing the Nine Blessings Development. Opinion / political pieces are printed verbatim, in their entirety, and are not fact-checked. We reserve the right to not run an opinion or political piece that we find objectionable. If you have an opinion or political piece you would like to share, please contact The Great Falls Gazette at info@gfgazette.com or call (406) 604-8929.