UPDATE & Correction. WLHS researched and found the ownership of the trailer park had changed, but only within the family – not as a new buyer/seller situation. The changes in fees being charged were explained to be “updates” for years old inconsistencies in the billings of residents. Here is a letter from one of the residents, that was in the Harbor Light and it shows how important communication is. We can all do better as the trailer park is important in our neighborhood.  Please support anyone that brings attention to an issue, help get the facts and carry on to support the residents, if at all possible. One organization that fights for the rights of residents in parks like this, say it like this:

What We’re Fighting For

Manufactured home communities can be a critical source of affordable housing in rural and exurban areas for working families and seniors on fixed incomes. However, over the past 20 years, manufactured home communities increasingly have gone from “mom and pop” enterprises to ownership by large corporations and private equity firms. Corporate ownership has brought with it an unsustainable business model of rapidly escalating lot fees – the rent residents pay for the land on which their homes sit — and decreasing investment into community operation. Residents are stuck, choosing between paying increasing rent, sometimes at the expense of food or medicine, or abandoning their homes. MHAction.org 

May 6, 2024

Dear Harbor Springs Resident,

As we come to consider the zoning and affordable housing issues in our community, let’s not forget we have “the most beautiful” mobile home “park” in Michigan right here on East Lake Street, called Harbor Springs Estates.

This is a lovely park with more than 70 lots rented out to individual manufactured homeowners, including veterans, disabled, seniors on fixed incomes, young couples saving to buy a piece of land to build a home, and others who work and shop in local businesses. Some of them are your cashiers, store clerks, wait staff and house cleaners, even nurses at Bay Bluffs up the street.

Our park looks more like a suburban subdivision than a “trailer park.” It is hidden behind a magnificent clubhouse and a resident childrens’ playground. It is an asset to Harbor Springs, providing affordable housing for hundreds of self-sufficient and self-supporting honest and respectable citizens who appreciate the opportunity to live here.

YET, THIS MOBILE HOME PARK IS IN DANGER. Since a big investment firm (we don’t know who because they hide behind an LLC) purchased our park recently, the new owners have skyrocketed the lot rent (up 23% in 2023 alone, with inflation at 3.4%), threatening to economically evict the residents.

Worse, they have added fees on top of fines and called this late rent. If you decline to pay these onerous fees, the owners claim we are behind. It only takes three incidents of late rent to legally evict a tenant of a mobile home park.

You might say, “It’s a free country with free enterprise; why don’t you just move to another park or buy a plot of land of your own?” Well, “mobile home” is actually a misnomer since most of us cannot afford the 10,000 to 20,000 dollars it costs to move one. And HUD doesn’t allow the older houses to travel on the highways. Can’t we just sell the home on site, you ask. No, who wants to die from stress of rent hikes on a fixed income?

For every $100 rent increase, our home value drops $10,000 according to economists. Even if we could overcome our moral repugnance to cheat a would-be buyer, our home values are down below market even now. Plus, a Princeton research group worked with the US Census last year and confirmed that, as the rent rises consuming an increasing percentage of household income, the renter’s death rate does too. And, an eviction judgment raises your chances of death by 40%. Just the threat of eviction raises it 19%.

It is not free enterprise or free market when you don’t have free choice. This has been happening all over Michigan to 200,000 people in 1000 such parks during just the past decade. All over America this is happening to 20 million more low-income citizens who are trying to live in peace, taking care of themselves, like we are, not asking for subsidies or government handouts.

Whatever you decide about the zoning issue in our town, start by helping us Harbor Springs preserve the affordable housing we already have right here, right now. There is a package of bills in Lansing to protect us who own manufactured houses sitting on rented lots, proposed by Senator John Cherry of Flint. You might call Paul Terranova at 608-520-0057 or email pterranova@mhaction.org for more information.

Like MHAction on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mhaction.org. Or, best of all, watch the Michigan Senate Hearing held February 20 and 27, 2024 by going to Michigan.senate.gov. Click on “broadcast schedule/ video archives” under Senate TV, click on “Playlists,” then scroll down to the Housing and Human Services Committee where you will find the actual recordings, debating these issues.

Best Regards,
Pamela Cowell, MD