Trailer park investors’ meeting draws protest
Housing advocates lament displacement and narrowing options.
Inside Austin’s Westin Hotel on Friday, two mobile home investors gathered more than 100 potential park owners for a crash course in how to maximize profits owning trailer parks.
Downstairs, protesters flooded the Westin lobby with chants and signs, then gathered on the sidewalk for a graduation ceremony mocking the course — complete with a megaphone speech from “Dr. Profit.”
It was the latest showdown in the tension over Austin mobile home parks, where displacement of low-income residents and vanishing space has narrowed options for those who own a mobile home but must rent a site for it.
City Council Member Greg Casar and local advocacy groups helped residents of the North Lamar Community Mobile Home Park sue in 2015 after new owners spiked rents and served eviction notices to those who didn’t pay. A settlement later moderated the rent increases.
The new owners of the park are Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds of RV Horizons, the same men whose Friday Mobile Home University “boot camp” at the Westin promised to teach investors “the correct way” to finance and operate mobile home parks.
“They are teaching unethical business practices, and that is what we’re here to stand up against,” protesters shouted.
Mobile Home University’s website touts mobile homes as “the hottest sector of real estate right now, due to the endless decline in the U.S. economy.” It says the $2,000 course will teach others how to profit by raising rents on people who, in many cases, are helpless to go elsewhere.
“With over 20% of American households now making $20,000 per year or less and another 10,000 baby boomers