Protecting Manufactured Housing from Private Equity

The fifth installment of our Tools for Tackling Corporate Landlords policy analysis series is Protecting Manufactured Housing from Private Equity, which analyzes a suite a policy interventions to combat private equity’s growing presence in the manufactured housing market.

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While the recently passed 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act attempted to address the risks created by private equity ownership of single-family housing on the federal level, the law largely overlooked private equity ownership of manufactured housing. On the state level, policymakers have begun to adopt measures such as rent control, eviction protections, and portfolio size limits that protect manufactured housing residents and prevent corporate exploitation. The report explores a number of such measures, including: 

• Rent stabilization policies to prevent extreme rent increases
• Eviction prevention measures, including just cause eviction protections, opportunities to cure, and protection from retaliation
• Support for cooperative resident ownership of parks, including opportunity to purchase laws and tax reforms
• Landlord-tenant communication improvements, including improved requirements around record keeping, notice periods, ownership disclosure, and others
• Measures to prevent private equity from amassing large portfolios of manufactured housing
• Transparency and disclosure requirements, including park licensing, ownership tracking, and public dashboards
• Requiring federally-backed home loans to include tenant protection provisions
• Increasing enforcement capacity and accountability mechanisms

This installment builds on the series’ previous reports, which explored landlord licensing and rental inspections (Part 1), state preemption of housing justice measures (Part 2), and pro-competitive housing policy reforms (Part 3), and proven and proposed solutions (Part 4).

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