THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Sometimes that phrase refers to the management instead of the residents. A case in point is the North Lamar Mobile Home Park in Austin Texas.

Mobile home owners may own their trailers, but not the land beneath them. This year, a company called RV Horizons purchased the North Lamar Park. One of the first actions of new management was a rent hike, bringing that monthly cost from $380 per month up to $450. Residents were also told they had to pay for water and sewage separately, adding another $150 a month. Combined with new fees for stipulations like having more than two cars, or more than four people living in a home, residents in North Lamar say they were looking at a monthly housing cost of close to $800 per month.

The park is owned by Dave Reynolds and Frank Rolfe, who aren’t your average landlords; they’re a new breed of real estate mogul, among the largest mobile home park owners in the country. Since getting into the business in the 1990s, they've become multimillionaires and now own and operate about 170 parks nationwide.

Rolfe told America Tonight he raises rents on about 70 percent of newly purchased mobile home parks, and also adds utility fees. He says the money often goes to property improvements, with North Lamar being a typical example.

But besides raising the rents to what he says is market value and making improvements, Rolfe’s rules also include a new code of conduct for residents.

“We call it ‘no pay, no stay,’ so if you don’t play by the rules of the park and if you don’t pay your rent, then you have to go,” Rolfe said. “When you have no rules, they go crazy because they have no boundaries.”

Rolfe’s tactics and his choice of words have angered many. He once told Bloomberg News that owning a mobile home park is like owning “a Waffle House where everyone is chained to the booths.” As Rolfe explained, mobile homes aren’t actually all that mobile. It can cost as much as $5,000 to actually move a trailer.

With 20 million people across the country living in mobile homes, Rolfe called the model the most stable cash flow business there is. But when asked if he could sympathize with the residents who are fighting for rents to stay low, he didn’t hesitate to defend his business practices.

“I can sympathize with them, except for the fact that they were getting a phenomenal free ride for all that time,” he said. “That’s the way you have to look at it because that’s just the fact.”

Pharma Bro has analogs in the mobile home park business. And they are just as greedy. They care not about what they own beyond squeezing the assets for as much as they can.