A Costly Form of Displacement: Eviction From Mobile Home Parks
Nestled on the east side of Jacksonville, about half an hour from downtown, Portside Mobile Home Park offers a pool, a playground, and basketball courts. You can purchase a two-bedroom mobile home here for about $30,000, roughly one-tenth of what the typical home in the metro area costs. But this seemingly attractive proposition hides the fact that residents often face displacement and instability. Every year, the park files one eviction case for every thirteen households living in the complex.
For their residents, mobile home parks offer a possibility that in today’s America is vanishing quickly: an affordable place to live. Those who own their home can often keep their housing costs fairly low by paying only a few hundred dollars per month in lot rent. However, these residents are not afforded the same protections against displacement as other homeowners and, if they miss a payment or if the park owner decides to sell, they could join the millions of Americans who face eviction each year.
In an article published in Urban Studies, we document for the first time the extent of eviction activity in mobile home parks in Florida, one of the states with the most parks in the country. Using eviction filing records collected by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies, we analyze more than 60,000 eviction cases filed by park owners across the state between 2012 and 2022. Our data shows that, much like with traditional renting, some park managers are particularly active when it comes to evicting residents. Mass evictions—when owners close a mobile home park and redevelop the land—are also common events. These closures not only displace entire communities, but can also reduce the supply of affordable housing available in the area.
Almost 3 million homes nationwide are sited in mobile home parks, and Florida is one of the states with the largest number of these units. Mobile homes are an important component of affordable homeownership: virtually every house sold under $125,000 is a mobile home. While some families rent both the unit and the lot underneath, the majority of residents own their homes and only pay lot rent. Overall, park residents tend to face lower housing costs than traditional renters. For example, the average lot rent nationwide was about $470 per month in 2023. These cost savings are particularly beneficial for the country’s poorest households—almost a third of park residents live in poverty—but also for those on fixed incomes or who have been priced out of other forms of homeownership.
These benefits can hide a costly risk, though. If you get evicted from a mobile home park, you will have to choose from the least bad of three options: abandon your property outright, sell it for pennies on the dollar, or try to move it to another location. This last possibility is often impossible: despite their name, mobile homes are not usually “mobile” and relocation would destroy or severely damage most units. In cases where moving the home is possible, it can cost up to $15,000 according to some estimates.
Our research shows that park residents do have more stability than the average Florida renter. In 2022, park residents in Florida faced a 1.5% eviction filing rate, compared to 5% for the average renter in this state. But this is much more precarious when compared to traditional homeowners: mobile home park residents have a displacement rate that is more than triple the state’s foreclosure filing rate of 0.5%. Park residents in some parts of the state also face much higher eviction rates. For example, eviction filing rates around Jacksonville and Gainesville are above 6%, more than triple the state average for parks.
Previous research from the Eviction Lab shows that, although most landlords rarely evict residents, a small number of owners file a large number of the evictions in a given area. This is also the case in mobile home parks. We identified the one hundred parks that filed the most eviction cases between 2012 and 2022. These hundred top-filing locations—which make up less than three percent of all parks in operation statewide during this period—were responsible for over 30% of all eviction cases filed within mobile home parks.
Pines Trailer Park residents have long-enjoyed their beachfront community along the western coastline of Florida in Bradenton Beach, just south of Tampa Bay. But the 55-plus community, already badly hit by Hurricane Helene in late 2024, found out in January that their owner was planning to shut down the park. When the property was sold in 2023 to Pines Park Investors LLC, residents assert they were told they could stay for at least five years. They have been fighting the mass displacement for months, hoping to buy more time.
We were particularly interested in instances like this, where a park was shuttered and all residents were at risk of displacement, often to make way for a new development plan under a new owner. Mobile home parks are common sites for rezoning and redevelopment, partly because some view them as undesirable spaces to have nearby. These park closures may not result in eviction cases, but they do displace residents.
We estimate that at least 127 parks with over 6,000 units closed across Florida between 2012 and 2022, though the true number of closures and units lost may be substantially higher.1 While some park sales lead to closures and mass displacement, on other occasions new owners might continue operating a park. Our research showed that, in the months after a park sale, eviction filings increased by 40%, suggesting that certain new investors may increase rents or pursue more aggressive eviction policies.2
There is a critical need for affordable housing in Florida. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the state needs to build more than 400,000 units for extremely low income households. Mobile homes, with the right protections, can be part of the solution to this problem.
Florida does offer some tools to mobile home residents that are not commonly available in other states, but these programs could be improved. For example, the state provides assistance for people living in parks that shut down, but the application process can be difficult and the aid is not enough to help with relocation. Florida is also one of the few states that allows residents to raise funds and put in an offer to purchase their community when it goes up for sale. Other states could mirror this policy, but practitioners have noted the importance of providing sufficient time for them to organize the community, secure funding, and put in competitive bids.3
The speed of an eviction can be a key factor here. In mortgage foreclosures or most land contract forfeitures, residents have months to react and find a solution. But for individual eviction cases, park residents in Florida are afforded a five-day notice period prior to a case being filed and a five-day response window. This occurs even though residents may have spent decades living in these communities or invested significant financial resources into purchasing and maintaining their homes. More time could be allowed for them to cure debts and avoid eviction.
Conversely, park residents in Florida are provided with certain protections that traditional renters are not. Florida’s Mobile Home Act provides residents with a longer notice period prior to a case being filed (five days instead of three), designates fewer causes for eviction, and makes it more difficult for owners to refuse to renew leases to current residents.4 Expanding these protections to all renters could be an important step in improving housing stability.
Our research shows that three percent of active parks account for a disproportionate share of eviction activity. Officials or organizations looking to proactively address this problem could efficiently direct their efforts by targeting rental assistance or programs that encourage alternative business practices towards the small subset of landlords who make up a large portion of eviction activity.
Almost three million families across the United States live in mobile home parks. Their experience is not too different from those in Florida’s parks: they are often low-income households, but they can enjoy an affordable place to live and often own their own home. To ensure their stability, we need to consider how to support them when they face troubles from missing a payment or rising rents, or when they face the closure of their community.
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