How the government helps investors buy mobile home parks, raise rent and evict people

Money is tight for Mary Hunt. She often has to decide which bills to pay on time — heat, her car loan, the phone bill. But she's been able to scrape by for more than 30 years, living in a mobile home park in Swartz Creek, Mich.

She owns her home outright. But she needs to pay monthly "lot rent" to the park for the little patch of land that it sits on. And the managers of the park, a couple named Stan and Nancy, used to live right here.

"I would call up and say, 'Hey, look, I've got half the rent,'" Hunt says, "I'll bring the rest, you know, next week or whatever." Stan and Nancy would say okay. So she could make it work, even earning just $10 an hour at her job driving elderly patients to doctor's appointments.

But a few years ago, Stan and Nancy retired, a local landowner sold the park, and Hunt, 50, learned that her new landlord was an out-of-state company in the business of buying mobile home parks.

These days, that's not unusual. A generation of mom and pop owners of mobile home parks are retiring and looking to sell. And investors and companies are swooping in to buy up these parks. They raise fees and