Soon after Aliea Brown moved into Unit 62 at Buck Island Manufactured Home Community in northern Mississippi in 2023, the trailer quickly proved unlivable. The front door had been installed upside down, windows didn’t seal, black mold appeared throughout, and insects including termites and ladybugs invaded the space. When cold weather arrived, a sewer pipe burst, sending foul wastewater to collect under the unit for months and sending a putrid odor through bathroom floor cracks.
Brown, 41, who shares the two-bedroom home with her partner Mason Obradovich, pays $675 a month. She has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and says she repeatedly asked management for repairs but lacked money to move. In February, Homes of America, the corporate owner of the park, told the couple the unit’s repair costs “exceed the current value of the unit” and that it would no longer be offered as a rental.
The park offered to sell the dilapidated home to Brown for $1,000, using part of her security deposit as financing. Buck Island’s management says it is converting from a rental model to one where residents must own their units. The couple declined the sale and were told to leave by April 30, but say they have nowhere else to go and cannot qualify for other housing because of limited credit and resources.
Their experience is not unique. About 22 million people live in manufactured home communities across the United States. For many low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities, these parks are among the few affordable housing options. In recent years, industry observers and residents say, institutional investors and large corporations have bought many parks, and subsequent changes have included higher lot rents and fees, reduced maintenance and more confrontational management.
NBC News interviewed 20 people living in manufactured home communities in Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and New Hampshire. They described similar patterns: rising costs, slower or nonexistent repairs, and a shift toward pressuring residents to buy homes or leave. “Some of the new owners seem to deal with their residents in a fairer way and some are just ruthless,” said John Calabrese, president of the Florida Federation of Manufactured Home Owners. “They have no concern whatsoever for the people that live there. The main focus is generating revenues.”
Buck Island is a 192-lot property about 35 miles southwest of Memphis and is among roughly 170 communities owned by Homes of America, an affiliate of Alden Global Capital. Representatives of Buck Island declined to comment about Brown’s case, and Homes of America and Alden did not respond to requests for comment.
Not all corporate owners operate the same way. For example, a spokesperson for Equity LifeStyle Properties, which owns Colony Cove in Florida, said the company aims to provide communities residents are proud of and noted an average annual rent increase of about 4.2% from 2017 through 2026.
Still, the stakes are high. There are roughly 7.2 million occupied manufactured homes nationwide, about 5.4% of the country’s housing stock. New manufactured homes remain far cheaper than new single-family houses: the Census reported an average new mobile home price of about $131,200 in 2025, compared with roughly $530,000 for a new single-family home. But most manufactured-home owners rent the land beneath their units and pay lot rents and fees, making them vulnerable if an owner raises costs or changes park policy.
Federal policymakers have recently turned attention to institutional buyers of single-family homes, and legislation moving through Congress would ban such purchases by large investors. That effort does not extend to mobile home parks, however. Some states are acting: Maine passed laws giving residents a right of first refusal when a park is for sale, and Michigan’s legislature is considering stronger regulation of parks.
Allegations of abusive practices have surfaced in court. A former regional manager for Homes of America, Elvin Zapata, sued the company in 2025 alleging that management concealed mold problems, skipped professional remediation, discouraged written documentation of mold, targeted renters with poor credit, carried out immediate evictions when payments were missed and sold dilapidated homes for $1,000 to transfer repair obligations to low-income buyers. Homes of America has not yet responded to the complaint.
Residents at other properties owned by large companies describe similar declines after ownership changes. Jim Hodgkins, who has lived for more than a decade at Greenmount Station in Belleville, Illinois, said maintenance fell off after Homes of America bought the park in 2022. Potholes multiplied, repair requests went unanswered, and Hodgkins said he endured nine days without heat in 18-degree weather. To avoid uprooting his daughter, who has mental health needs, Hodgkins bought his unit through a long-term loan from the company; but he worries about future major repairs and recent lot rent increases.
Brown and Obradovich sought help from Housing Education and Economic Development, a state nonprofit, which reviewed their case and sent a letter to park management calling the unit’s condition “deteriorated to the point of uninhabitability.” HEED asked that the couple be relocated to a renovated unit; Brown says alternative units shown to them were also moldy or otherwise unacceptable. Facing eviction, they are working with Legal Aid. Brown also says the park has refused to accept rent payments owed.
As parks convert rental units into owner-occupied models or push residents to purchase inexpensive but run-down homes, many lower-income households are left with stark choices: accept ownership and potential repair liabilities they can’t afford, move to unfamiliar and possibly costlier housing, or remain and endure unsafe conditions. For residents like Brown, with health problems and limited savings, the options are limited.