Mobile home rents soar, angering Arizona voters
Right-leaning residents say rising costs further sour them on Biden
Judy Youngs had gotten used to modest increases in her mobile home rent. Then late last year, she learned it would soar by 60% over the next four years. Already living on Social Security income, Youngs, 71, started clipping more grocery coupons and buying frozen Lean Cuisine meals on sale — five for $10. She dipped further into her savings to cover shortfalls and worried how long she’d be able to stay in her home.
Many of Arizona’s mobile home parks are experiencing big jumps in rent, deepening the financial woes of low-income residents already struggling with high food prices. The spike is tarnishing the economic views of a big group of voters in this swing state, even as Arizona’s economy booms. About 7% of Arizonans live in mobile homes, versus 5% nationwide, according to the Census Bureau.
Conversations with 30 mobile home residents in different parts of Arizona showed rising rents are giving some right-leaning voters another reason to stick with Trump and reducing other voters’ enthusiasm for either candidate.
“Everything is going up, and it’s putting a squeeze,” Youngs said after a recent town hall meeting at her mobile home park, Coyote Ranch. She backed former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 but isn’t sure how she’ll vote this time, expressing frustration with both Trump and President Joe Biden. “We don’t have, in my opinion, qualified people to run for president,” she said.
Housing costs have soared for many Americans, but the jump is particularly painful in the mobile home communities that have long served as one of the nation’s most affordable types of housing.
Residents typically own their houses but lease the land underneath. Those rents are jumping in many parts of the country because of several factors, including rising corporate ownership of the parks and higher demand as Americans get priced out of more expensive housing.
Buying the home itself is also getting more expensive; the average sales price of a new manufactured home rose faster than that of a new single-family home between 2017 and 2022, according to an analysis of federal data by the financial services company LendingTree. Arizona was the third-most-expensive state, with average prices rising 80% over that period to $160,500.
Arizona is enjoying faster-than-average economic growth, low unemployment and a flood of high-tech investment. But the mostly right-leaning residents of Coyote Ranch — many living on modest fixed incomes — mention little of that when they talk about the economy. Instead they wonder how a lifestyle that used to seem so affordable is suddenly so out of reach.
Some have joined a letter-writing campaign seeking rent-control laws from state legislators, a project begun by angry mobile-home residents near Sedona.
“Where can we even go, if we must move — to our cars, to our adult child’s home?” one of the group’s recent letters asked state representatives. “Or do we become part of the ever-increasing homeless population?”
Cindy Tinsley, a real estate agent and Coyote Ranch resident, said more of her neighbors are being forced to sell their homes and move to escape spiking rents. Some go to live with family while others seek out older trailer parks “in a part of Yuma that is not very nice or safe,” she said. “It breaks my heart.”
When rents go up, many residents are trapped. Despite their name, most mobile homes these days are not trailers on wheels but small ranch houses designed to be left in place. It can cost $20,000 or more to move them, making residents dependent on the parks where they live.
National data on lot rent is hard to come by. In mid-2022, rents were 4.9% higher than in mid-2021, according to a Fannie Mae report. But many communities have reported much higher spikes over the past few years.
Fountain East, a park in Mesa, has raised annual rent by 9-11% for the past two years, according to resident Kari Torgerson. On the Greens, a park in Cottonwood, rent rose by 9% this year, after an 8% jump last year, resident Lynda Schlipf said. At nearby Lampliter Village in Clarkdale, the most recent hike was 10%, according to resident Scott Murray.