Abundant Housing Illinois

Link to full article at The Chicago Tribune

I was working in eastern Kentucky last fall when I received a call from a woman facing her second eviction. Months earlier, her apartment had been sold to a new investor, and rising rents forced her out. Now, nearing 80, she couldn’t find another place she could afford.

When we finally found her, she was sleeping on a couch in someone else’s cramped trailer, unsure how long they’d let her stay. Seeing us, she broke down sobbing — apologizing for losing the apartment we’d helped her get.

Like many in her situation, she blamed herself. But she wasn’t the only person I met who had lost their home after a corporate purchase and sudden rent hike. From Appalachia to Chicago, all faced the same harsh reality: There simply aren’t enough affordable places left to live.

In the past decade, institutional investors have acquired more than 800,000 mobile home lots — a fifth of the market nationwide — often hiking rents on residents with nowhere else to go. In Illinois for example, mobile home residents in Champaign have experienced sharp lot rent increases after their mobile home parks were purchased, with residents in one parkseeing rent increase by more than 50%.

In response, Illinois state Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, D-Bridgeview, recently introduced a bill to cap rent increases in mobile home parks to 3% plus inflation. “In recent years, institutional investors have been buying up these mobile home parks, leading to skyrocketing rents for residents who have few alternative housing options,” Rashid told his colleagues at a March 20 Housing Committee session.

Radhid’s testimony was followed by Frank Bowman, executive director of the Illinois Manufactured Housing Association, who defended the industry by saying: “If a senior owns their home outright and lives in a manufactured home community, there is no more affordable way of living.”

He’s not wrong — but that’s exactly the problem. There often are no cheaper homes. Residents of manufactured homes are particularly vulnerable, not only because these residents — who often own their homes but not the lots under them — cannot easily move, but also because manufactured housing is banned in much of the state’s land, leaving it artificially scarce. Unlike some , Illinois does not allow manufactured homes on all residential lots, and some cities such as Chicago .