August 1st Newsflash: Letters were sent out for 2027 lot rents. The ones that we have seen so far amounted to a 9% increase, when inflation the last 12 months averaged 3.5%. Another predatory lot increase from Havenpark! We are formulating a response.
Once Havenpark purchased our community, the price we pay each month for the land our homes sit on started going up, and that has not stopped. For more info on private equity see The Dark Side of Private Equity by the University of Chicago Law School.
We feel the price increases have been and continue to be outrages. One of our local Realtors told us that for every $100 lot rent increase, the value of our home decreases by $10,000! Havenpark is taking most of the added money and sending it to their investors while we have to suffer with less money to live or improve our homes while they have cut our included services.
The rent increases will continuue! Havenpark promises investors steady and high-yield returns through a recession-proof, "acquire-and-improve" business model in manufactured housing, leveraging cheap government-backed loans to rapidly scale and increase cash flow via lot rent increases. Continued rent increases are in fact their business model!
What can we do to stop the continued rent increases?
Protest, send letters and get the local media involved (which we have done and will continue).
Hope Havenpark sells the park to a company other than a private equity company.
Purchase the community from Havenpark after we form a cooperative, do our due diligence, obtain lot owners approvals, obtain financing and then operate this as a Resident Owned Community (ROC). We are exploring this option but a lot of factors have to come together which makes this option less likely.
Work with our elected state officials in Des Moines to pass a bill limiting manufactured communities lot increases to the last 12 months of inflation (a bill was introduced in 2025 that did just that but it went nowhere), no Republicans signed on even after we met in-person with a few of OUR elected Republican officials in Des Moines). We continue to work on this but the legislature has been controlled by Republicans that have not shown any interest in keeping our community “affordable” or limiting the power of the community land owners. Other states have passed similar bills, in fact New York limits the increase to 3%.
The graph below shows the lot rent increases from 2022 until 2026 and projected increases based on their past increases through 2030. All of the past increases were more than inflation by a large amount. The video shows one of our organized demonstrations against the owners excessive lot rent increases.
