Vulture Wars: Alden Global Capital’s Assault on Manufactured Housing Residents

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Key Points

• Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund infamous for acquiring and stripping local newspapers, has expanded into the manufactured housing sector. In the last four years, Homes of America, an affiliate of Alden Global, has spent over $275 million to acquire over 10,000 manufactured housing lots in 138 parks across 17 states. By taking over thousands of units, Homes of America further threatens the country’s already dwindling supply of affordable housing.
• Homes of America continues to acquire properties even as many other corporate investors appear to have slowed their buying sprees.
• Numerous news stories have reported on Alden Global’s dramatic lot rent increases, with one park’s lot rent increasing by almost 100% after Alden took it over and many others increasing by around 50% over just a few years. News stories have also covered the company’s aggressive evictions and persistent neglect of habitability issues.
• According to residents whose stories appear in this report, parks taken over by Homes of America have seen an uptick in legal and financial abuse, resident displacement, and structural quality complaints.
• Almost half (46%) of Alden’s manufactured housing parks are in Florida, with most concentrated in the Tampa Bay region. Alden has initiated at least 285 eviction actions in Florida since 2021. 194 of these eviction filings (68%) reached the forcible entry/ unlawful detainer stage, when a tenant is ordered to vacate. In contrast, a 2016 study from the Eviction Lab found that fewer than half (just 43%) of all eviction filings in the U.S. result in the removal of the tenant.
• Approximately a quarter of Alden’s parks are in the Midwest, with most clustered in Illinois and Michigan.
• Randall Smith, Alden’s billionaire founder, at one point owned 17 mansions in Palm Beach, Florida, and sold off 14 of them for a $57 million profit. His current home in Palm Beach has a market value of $50 million.
• Tenants are demanding that Alden halt rent increases, remove junk fees, make much-needed repairs, comply with existing legal requirements, and implement management procedures that treat tenants with dignity and respect. Tenants have also called for urgent policy intervention at the state and federal levels.

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