Macon, GA
Roger Campbell doesn’t want to move. He’s lived in the same mobile home park in northwest Macon for 20 years. But conditions have declined in recent months, and he’s getting desperate.
“It’s really sad,” he said.
Campbell lives in Country Estates, a 58-lot mobile home community on Thomaston Road, where the grass sometimes grows eight feet high and wild animals roam the grounds. A few weeks ago, Campbell’s 4-year-old granddaughter stumbled across a rat while riding her bike down the road. His neighbors have seen rattlesnakes slithering about.
Campbell has three young grandchildren — one lives with him and the other two regularly visit. He’s afraid to let them play outside because he doesn’t know what might jump out of the weeds and find them.
“My grandchildren, for example, if a ball goes into this grass, they know not to go in there. Something could be attached to them if they come back out,” he said. “I mean, it’s becoming dangerous.”
Most of the homes in the park sit vacant, and Campbell said multiple residents have moved out in the past few months. Some, he said, had lived there for decades. But the once well-kept community is now in a state of decay, and no one seems to be doing anything about it.
Things first started to take a turn for the worse about five months ago, Campbell said. In March, his wife, Theresa, received a letter informing her that the park’s management had changed hands.
“Hometown Parks will now be managing the property,” the letter read. “We are excited to work with you and work together to maintain and improve all areas of the community.”
Hometown Parks, a subsidiary of the Augusta-based real estate company Sherman & Hemstreet, manages five mobile home parks in Macon and 18 others throughout the state of Georgia. In late March, it took over management of Country Estates and North Park Manor, another Macon mobile home park. Conditions have drastically deteriorated in both locations.
Neither Hometown Parks nor Sherman & Hemstreet responded to requests for comment.
‘No one should have to live like this’
It started with the grass, Campbell said. The landscapers that used to keep the yards tame stopped coming, and the greenery soon grew thick and tall. Next, the light posts that once illuminated the park stopped working, and no one came to replace the bulbs. Potholes began to form in the narrow road that runs through the community, and water pipes started leaking. No one came to fix them.
Residents at Country Estates pay lot rent to the property owner, which is supposed to cover lawn service, road repairs and upkeep of common spaces. When issues arose this spring, Campbell did some research to track down the new manager of the park, since he said Hometown Parks hadn’t provided any contact information.
Campbell eventually got in touch with a woman who oversees both Country Estates and North Park Manor, and started calling and texting her when he and other residents noticed maintenance concerns.
“I would text her once a week saying, ‘Hey, have you heard anything about grass cutting?’ And my answer — the answer I’m getting is, ‘Supposed to talk to somebody tomorrow. Will let you know,’ ” Campbell said. “And so, I’d be like, ‘OK, thank you.’ And back and forth with that. And after the last time, I didn’t even text back because it’s going nowhere.”
The park manager did not respond to requests for comment.
He also called Hometown Parks directly to complain. But Campbell said he’d always get the same answers: “We’re working on it.” “Be patient.” Time would pass, and nothing would change.
“I quit calling Hometown Parks a couple months ago,” he said. He would just get an answering machine and no call back.
Once the property management stopped responding to Campbell’s calls, he reached out to Macon-Bibb County government for help. Campbell filed a complaint with both the Environmental Health Department and code enforcement because he was worried the conditions at Country Estates had become a health hazard.
“It’s an issue environmentally, obviously, because of the rats that are coming,” Campbell said.
John Baker, building abatement manager for Macon-Bibb County, confirmed that Campbell filed a complaint on Aug. 20 but said the Business and Development Services department hasn’t had the chance to inspect conditions yet. Complaints are up across the county, he said, and there aren’t enough inspectors to meet the rising demand.
The agency, which used to have seven inspectors, only has three at the moment, and Baker said it doesn’t have the resources to hire more. Until someone comes to inspect the park, the property management can get off scot-free.
In the meantime, Campbell and his neighbors have nowhere to turn for relief.
“It’s just wrong,” he said. “No one should have to live like this.”
A growing industry
Mobile home parks have existed in one form or another since the early 20th century, but the majority of U.S. mobile homes still standing today were built between 1950 and 1980, said Franke Rolfe, co-founder of Mobile Home University and the fifth-largest mobile home park owner in the country.
Rolfe bought his first mobile home park in 1996, and he’s made a business out of educating real estate investors about the best practices of mobile home park ownership and management. For years, Rolfe said, real estate investors ignored mobile home parks, which had acquired negative stereotypes.
“A lot of people have a completely wrong idea about the industry,” he said.
The industry is growing, though, and Rolfe thinks its future is bright. In the past, he said, most mobile home communities were independently owned by a resident of the park. But as those “Mom and Pop” owners got older, they could no longer take care of their properties like they had in the past.
At the same time, many real estate investors were looking for new opportunities in a tight market. After the Great Recession of 2008, the need for affordable housing was high, and a shortage of options reached near-crisis levels.
Since then, it’s become increasingly popular among real estate companies to acquire mobile home parks and other forms of affordable housing. Multiple publications, including Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal have published articles about the benefits of such investments in the past few years.
Rolfe said it can take some effort to revitalize parks that have been poorly managed for years, but once conditions are cleaned up, they can bring in profit, just like any other investment.
“The demand is huge,” he said, adding, “With consolidation will come professional ownership, professional management, people bringing parks back to life. So, I think that part is pretty good, if the economics are good.”
Now, real estate investors are starting to buy up mobile home communities in bulk and oversee them from afar. There are about 44,000 mobile home parks across the country, and they’re often not owned and managed locally like they used to be.
The top five mobile home community owners and operators oversee more than 360,000 mobile home lots within those communities, according to a 2017 report by the Manufactured Housing Institute. Hometown Parks manages 50 communities in six different states. Without regular attention from on-site staff, remote managers can easily keep issues out of sight and out of mind.
Rolfe said remote mobile home park owners or management organizations can keep up with the conditions of their properties with the help of on-site managers, which he called the “eyes and ears” on the ground, as well as with technological aids.
For example, he said, many companies have managers attach high-definition cameras to their cars and do drive-throughs of the park once a week or so and then send those videos to the property owner, so they’re aware of any issues that might need attention. He also said park managers typically live in the mobile home community and are readily available to residents.
Rolfe said there are no regulations that dictate where property managers live or how often they should visit a site if they manage it remotely, besides good sense. He questioned how a manager could go weeks without stepping foot on the premises.
“That’s not really normal because I don’t know how, then, they manage the park, right?” he said. “I mean, how would you — how do you collect rent or anything if there’s nobody there?”
According to letters sent to residents at both Country Estates and North Park Manor in March, residents pay their rent through a management-provided CashPay card, which can be used at places like Walmart and Kroger. But Campbell said there’s an added transaction fee.
If they want to be successful, real estate investors and managers should do their due diligence before taking over a mobile home park, Rolfe said.
“A lot of people have a completely wrong idea about the industry,” he said. “I mean, the typical mobile home park or manufactured home, whatever you want to call it, they’re really just like high-density subdivisions, and the customers are nothing like they’re portrayed on TV and the movies. And so, if you want to be in the business, make sure you understand what business you’re getting into.”
‘It’s morally wrong’
Until someone from management decides to return his calls, Campbell is powerless. There’s no emergency hotline, no one he can hold accountable. There’s a management office inside one of the mobile homes near the entrance to the park, but Campbell said no one’s held office hours there in weeks.
Campbell doesn’t blame the on-site manager.
“She’s very nice and sincere, and I’d like to state this is not her fault,” he said. “I believe she’s caught between a rock and a hard place.”
He wants things to get better. He just wishes the management company would take action to improve conditions at the park, and he’s not sure what else he can do to make that happen.
Some residents have threatened to stop paying their rent. Others have given up and moved out. Campbell wonders if he could get a group together to sue Hometown Parks for failure to render services.
Campbell doesn’t want to leave. He owns his mobile home, and he’s lived in it for two decades. Campbell’s not sure why the new management company wouldn’t want to take better care of the property, but he thinks residents of the park deserve better.
“It’s morally wrong,” Campbell said, “because people have the right to be able to live in livable conditions.”
Samantha Max is a Report for America corps member and reports for The Telegraph with support from the News/CoLab at Arizona State University. Follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/samantha.max.9 and on Twitter @samanthaellimax. Learn more about Report for America at www.reportforamerica.org.
This story was originally published August 30, 2018 11:11 AM.