S06.E07: Mobile homes and Frank Rolfe

[Athena]

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Other segments: Stephen Moore, Herman Cain, Catherine Pugh / Heather Holly scandal

 

[scarynikki12]

D’arcy Carden for the win! I never knew anything about mobile homes but I’m not surprised it’s an awful situation. 

[Annber03]

Woooooooooow, Rolfe is an asshole. 

I lived in a mobile home park here in town as a child, and I remember my parents not caring much for the people who ran the place (their son was a huge bully, and kept bothering me and other kids in the park a lot of the time). Hopefully the park hasn't had any sort of connection to these skeevy groups, but sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if it has, or if it does in the future. I like that there are some ways to try and push back against that stuff, though, and I hope trailer park residents take advantage of whatever options they have available to them. 

As for the potential new picks for the Fed, at this point I'm not even remotely surprised, because it's Trump, of course he's going to pick utterly shitty people for these jobs :/. God willing something happens to keep them from getting in. 

[Lantern7]

“Here at the Fed, everything is ducky.  Very ducky. ‘Shucky-ducky’, you might say.” 🙄 🦆

So-so topic overview saved by a great parody. “You bought a home!” “Say that again, mother fucker! [cocking shotgun]”

Dude in the background of Divorce Court . . . he’s got a cult following, doesn’t he?

Edited April 8, 2019 by Lantern7

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Janet from the Good Place and a Mole Wife together in a trailer park! Who knew that would be so great?

[peeayebee]

4 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

So-so topic overview saved by a great parody. “You bought a home!” “Say that again, mother fucker! [cocking shotgun]”

I agree that the topic was so-so. I was kind of bored, though I still 'liked' learning about one more horrible thing in this world.

And, yes, that parody was fantastic. I loved how the one lady moved out of the rooms just like the one in the original. It was a weird, swaying movement that no human being does in real life.

3 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Janet from the Good Place and a Mole Wife together in a trailer park! Who knew that would be so great?

I didn't recognize the Mole Wife! But Janet, she's great in everything. 

[meowmommy]

My mother lived in a manufactured home, and it just felt like a nice house to me.  I was actually disconcerted when the lawyer handling her estate referred to it as a trailer.  

I did an exhaustive search for a place to live in retirement, including many, many mobile homes.  Fortunately, in the course of my research, I learned a lot of the information John presented here, especially the part about the jump in lot rents.  I tried to find homes that included the land, but they were surprisingly hard to find.  It's the people in the rental parks who are desperate to unload their houses.  I did come across a few of the resident owned communities, but they are few and far between.  I did not buy a manufactured home.

Some of the lot rents are so high, you could find a nice apartment for the same price.

4 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Janet from the Good Place and a Mole Wife together in a trailer park!

I have no idea who either of these ladies is (what is a Mole Wife?), but they did a good job on the parody.  How many sweet potato pies did production have to get?

[ElectricBoogaloo]

1 hour ago, peeayebee said:

I didn't recognize the Mole Wife! But Janet, she's great in everything. 

I have a feeling that Kimmy would be really mad that I said mole wife instead of mole woman!

[ganesh]

3 hours ago, meowmommy said:

Some of the lot rents are so high, you could find a nice apartment for the same price.

I would have liked some sort of comparison. Because there's lots of options for low income families to buy a house too. You can get a loan for the down payment, for example. There wasn't any information on why these people felt that the mobile home was their only option

[Hooper]

I LOLed at the part where the dude leading the tour of the mobile home park told folks not to be put off by beach towels hung over windows in place of curtains.   Because I live in a manufactured home (on my own 10 acres) and yuppers.  There's venerable towel hung over one of my bedroom windows.   I prefer to think of my decor as being hipster, but I suppose trailer trash would apply too 😄.

[peeayebee]

10 hours ago, meowmommy said:

I have no idea who either of these ladies is (what is a Mole Wife?), but they did a good job on the parody. 

Janet ("Not a robot.") is on The Good Place, and Mole Wife refers to The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

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How many sweet potato pies did production have to get?

They could have gotten them from Linda Belcher (Bob's Burgers).

[meowmommy]

33 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

Janet ("Not a robot.") is on The Good Place, and Mole Wife refers to The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Mercy buckets.

[Iguana]

Hi, John. I’m a bit late to the party this week due to a dvr failure to record. (“Stupid plastic piece of crap!”). Mobiles, aka trailers aka manufactured homes, is not a topic I would have expected you to cover.   Sorry to say that it was not your most entertaining show. When the best part is the 3 minute ad parody at the end, you know this won’t be this years Emmy submission. 

[palmaire]

I dunno. When my manufactured home requires a license plate, it's hard to think of it as anything but a trailer.

(Fortunately I live in a 55+ development and own my residence as well as the land it's built on.)

[OpalNightstream]

I actually found it interesting. I knew nothing about the topic (I’m in the northeast and don’t see trailer/mobile home parks around here)

[xaxat]

Private equity also invested a lot of money in single family homes during the recession. They turned them into rental properties, and (surprise!) they treat their tenants just as shittily.

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In 2016, with the real-estate market heating up in metropolitan areas across the country, single-family rental companies also started pushing the limits of how much they could raise rent every year. American Homes 4 Rent raised rents by 11 percent between 2016 and 2018; the average rents in the top 30 markets in the country increased by just 6 percent over the same time, according to Zillow. American Homes 4 Rent owned 70 percent more properties in the first nine months of 2018 than in the same period in 2014, but it collected 150 percent more rent. “It’s up to us to educate tenants in a new way that there will be annual rental rate increases,” David Singelyn, the CEO of American Homes 4 Rent, said at an investor’s forum in 2017. “This has been a very passively managed industry for 30, 40 years, up until the institutional players came in.”

Private equity owns a lot or residential property.

[ChicksDigScars]

I take a cardio drumming class at the clubhouse of a local mobile home park. The clubhouse is nice, but the rest of the park is depressing. For one, it is behind a Lowe's, next to WalMart to the south, and Big Lots to the north. Not exactly scenic. In contrast, there's a newer mobile home park across town, built into a pretty wooded area. It's actually quiet and private and nice. 

Anyway, while at drumming one night, I passed a bulletin board with advertisements for some of the existing trailer's for sale. They show a photo and list the amenities. They also include the lot rent, which varied from $900 to $1000 a month, with water and trash pick up included. $1000 a month for lot rent ALONE, in an older, crowded, not very scenic, shit hole trailer park? That doesn't even include the monthly payment for the trailer? How do some of these families afford that? I remember being shocked, and then this episode of LWT aired and it all became clear. 

[Danny Franks]

And in the latest* instalment of American Capitalists Find Yet Another Way of Preying on the Poor, we have this episode.

It's sad that, the second John mentioned mobile homes, I knew that this was going to be about some company or other exploiting the fuck out of the people who live in them. This is what unfettered capitalism is - being given free rein to squeeze as much as you can out of the weakest in society. Yet millions and millions of people, including a lot of those who are among the weakest, still support it.

* Not really latest, because I'm a couple of weeks behind with this show.

Edited April 23, 2019 by Danny Franks

[Hanahope]

On 4/23/2019 at 9:03 AM, Danny Franks said:

And in the latest* instalment of American Capitalists Find Yet Another Way of Preying on the Poor, we have this episode.

It's sad that, the second John mentioned mobile homes, I knew that this was going to be about some company or other exploiting the fuck out of the people who live in them. This is what unfettered capitalism is - being given free rein to squeeze as much as you can out of the weakest in society. Yet millions and millions of people, including a lot of those who are among the weakest, still support it.

* Not really latest, because I'm a couple of weeks behind with this show.

Me too! (in being behind even more).

What is disgusting is just how many people shrug their shoulders and just don't care that people are being exploited like this because its not them, or anyone close to them.  I really am not surprised that greedy rich people found a way to get even more rich and squeeze the poor even more.  Who is buying/renting these abandoned mobile homes and is able to pay the ever increasing rent?  What are they going to do when there's just no more left to squeeze? 

I remember when a friend bought a mobile home a few decades ago, while the rest of our friend group were renting apartments.  He was convinced he made a good investment.  But a few years later, we all bought homes and actually started to gain equity with an appreciating asset, while, I presume, his mobile home depreciated.  I lost touch with him when I moved away over a decade ago, so I don't know his current circumstances.  I hope he's weathering any rent increases ok.