The Cascade PBS documentary explores how one ownership group has bought up communities statewide and raised rents, straining low-income residents. Some residents have organized into tenant organizations or filed complaints with the state Attorney General's Office, resulting in an investigation into the company's practices.
Because she suffers from chronic illness and a bad back, the year-old former veterinary tech already struggled with yard work in the August heat, but the cloud of yellowjackets that dogged her as she worked made it nearly intolerable. Chandler said she slipped on a perennial patch of ice surrounding the mailboxes last winter and badly injured her hip. Since then, residents allege the company has cut down trees that once shaded the park, removed a playground, allowed roads to crumble and curtailed maintenance โ all while hiking lot rental rates, charging extra for previously included utilities and imposing new fines.
And you know none of us feels secure in our home here. Debbie Chandler outside her home in Hideaway Community near Spokane. The predominantly low-income residents at Hurst parks across the state contend that a combination of deteriorating conditions, hostile management practices, steep rent increases and other new costs, and the fact that they own their homes โ but not the ground they sit on โ has put them in a terrible bind.
Many can no longer afford to live there, but leaving would mean abandoning the homes they own, and there is nowhere cheaper to go. Many residents feel helpless and isolated, but they are far from alone. To increase revenues, park owners can minimize spending on upkeep, hike rents, impose new charges and shift operating costs to residents.
While investors rake in billions, thousands of American families are being priced out of one of the last bastions of affordable housing โ and when the investors can make more money off the land than the parks that sit on top of it, the parks often go away altogether. Since taking over the company, the couple have rapidly increased its acquisitions. The company has doubled its park holdings in Washington since and now owns the land under one out of every 40 mobile home rental units in the state.
