Remember the 2023 story of mobile home residents in Johnson County whose parks were bought by investment company Havenpark Communities, then had their services taken away while their lot rents were jacked up?
The residents started a couple of tenants’ unions—the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents Network, and Johnson County Residents United (JCRU)—and have been working behind the scenes to try and fix problems and keep their neighbors in their homes.
That has now resulted in “Expectations for Livable Communities,” a list of demands on Havenpark, which JCRU unveiled today.
Residents are calling on Havenpark to institute “a two-year moratorium on lot rent increases” and said park owners needed “to provide clean, safe drinkable water, essential park maintenance, and responsive on-site management in all parks.”
“Havenpark has continued to impose annual lot rent increases while canceling amenities, allowing park conditions to decline, and neglecting upkeep of park necessities such as street lighting, storm shelters, snow removal, or tree trimming,” JCRU said in a release.
Havenpark owns five parks in Iowa City, and they’re not an outlier.
“The majority of Johnson County parks are now owned by out-of-state companies or private equity groups,” JCRU says.
It’s all part of the ongoing trend of private equity buying up all the affordable housing and selling it back to us at increasingly unaffordable prices.
But tenants unions like JCRU are trying to turn the tide back in favor of homeowners—and they’re a lot like labor unions in that respect.
Do you live in a mobile home park? How have things changed for you? Email me.
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This story first appeared in the Iowa Worker’s Almanac, an Iowa Starting Line newsletter.
