Cary residents protest mobile home park sales, lease, bills

Homeowners must submit plans to sell their homes in writing and have the deal approved. Management also can inspect homes and require improvements to meet an unspecified “code of attractiveness.” The new homebuyer must pay a $2,000, nonrefundable move-in fee to the park and make required changes before moving in.

The new lease also gives management the right to evict someone deemed “problematic,” defined as “any person who becomes objectionable, creates a disturbance, and or becomes a nuisance.”

“Mobile Estates will be the ONLY judge in this case,” the lease states.

What Las Americas residents described sounds like “all the tricks” that give a landlord the advantage in taking over mobile homes and making more money from their sale, UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Rick Su told The N&O on Thursday.

There is nothing illegal about the lease, but it gives the park owner substantial power over home sales, Su said. The lease has “lots and lots and lots” of potential fines, and any small thing could trigger eviction, he said.

Under state law, someone who is evicted has 21 days to remove their belongings from a rental property or lot, but because the lease requires the park owner to approve a new buyer at least 30 days before the sale, and the buyer has to pay a steep move-in fee, that makes it nearly impossible to sell the home, Su said.

Move-in fees are typically $350 to $500, he said, agreeing that it’s not clear what the fee pays for, since the buyer is responsible for setting up a home, connecting utilities and yard upkeep.

“The lease makes it really hard for a person to sell their mobile home,” Su said. “Especially if they’re subject to eviction, it certainly sets up a structure in which it makes it really hard for you to move it, really hard for you to dispose of it, sell it, and then essentially the landlord will take possession and sell it themselves.”

Justice Center attorney steps in

Las Americas residents and their allies have reached out to the N.C. Justice Center. They also want to meet with Bullard, Bueno said, but as of Thursday, they had not gotten a response.

N.C. Justice Center attorney Jonathan Patton sent a letter to Bullard last week. In it Patton explained that the new contract is void, because state law requires a 60-day notice for mobile home owners who rent a lot, and that residents should get copies of both their old or new contracts, which spell out the rules and regulations.

He asked Bullard to tell residents their rent will not go up April 1 as planned. The residents have been told about their rights and legal options that may be available to them if they are evicted or face other problems, Patton said.

“Residents want to know what activities and behaviors are actually prohibited, and the costs associated with those violations,” Patton said.

Taking the owner to court will be a very difficult, expensive and lengthy process, Bueno said. Some families, including those without legal immigration status, fear the exposure and the risk of losing their homes, she said. They want N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein to help resolve the situation.

No complaints have been filed against Bullard with the N.C. Real Estate Commission.

On Saturday, families in the neighborhood of tall trees, paved streets and neat homes relaxed or tended their yards. A woman stirred a stockpot of chicken over a gas burner on her screened-in front porch.

While some said they knew of residents having problems, none said it affected them or wanted to be identified by name. Ortiz was among five residents who shared their stories during the virtual protest.

Development pressure, investors

The problems residents described at Las Americas are not unusual, according to Mobile Home University co-founder Frank Rolfe, one of the country’s largest mobile home park owners with roughly 20,000 lots in 25 states. That’s because park owners face very little competition for tenants and often benefit from local and state rules, Rolfe said in an MHU blog post.

Most U.S. cities, for instance, no longer allow mobile home parks to be built, Rolfe said. Only about 10 new parks are built each year, most in rural places, he said. It also can cost thousands of dollars to move and set up a mobile home, as well as add skirting, stairs and utilities, he said.

That’s also assuming the home can be moved; many older mobile homes are too unstable.

When homeowners are evicted or leave because they can’t pay the lot rent, abandoned property laws let the park owner take ownership of the home, Rolfe said.

Immigrants who lack legal status can face additional challenges, housing experts have said, because some landlords may not want to rent to them and they cannot take advantage of nonprofit and public housing supported by federal dollars.

Development is another threat. As nearby land is developed or redeveloped, raising property values, more investors pressure park owners to sell their land, especially as longtime “mom-and-pop” owners leave properties to their heirs.

Sometimes investors come in and keep the park going, but it’s usually not without a rent increase, more fees, rules and other steps to generate more income from the land, Rolfe said.

That was the case for Chapel Hill’s Tar Heel mobile home park on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, one of the last four mobile home parks in northern Chapel Hill.

Last month, the Town Council voted to let the park’s owner build a large self-storage building in an area of town designated for transit-oriented development because it was the only way to save 73 affordable Tar Heel mobile homes.

Representatives for Stackhouse Properties, which bought the park in 2019, told the council that commercial uses would help the property owner earn a profit and keep the mobile home park open for another 15 years. The alternative would be selling the park to an apartment developer and evicting the families, a Stackhouse attorney said.

Chapel Hill has since turned up the heat on years-long discussions with Orange County and neighboring towns about how to help those and other residents at risk of losing their mobile homes.

There are several options, from providing other affordable housing to relocation assistance and the construction of new parks on publicly owned land. Some residents also are banding together to buy their parks from the owners and manage them on their own.

That strategy is just starting to take hold in North Carolina, where 60 families in the Oak Meadows Mobile Home Park in Asheboro recently bought their mobile home park from an investor after a $140 lot rent increase over three years. The investor told the Asheboro Courier-Tribune that higher rents would keep the park from being closed and redeveloped.