When Maria Cassidy received a notice that her monthly rent was increasing by $200 after a Texas-based company bought Harvey’s mobile home park in Bonner, her heart sank.
“I felt trapped,” she told Montana Free Press.
Cassidy, who has lived at Harvey’s since 1990, said under the park’s previous owner, annual rent increases for the lot to park her mobile home ranged from $5 to $25. Before Oak Wood Properties purchased the park in 2023 and raised lot rents in 2024, the $420 per month was already difficult for many residents on fixed incomes to afford, she said. The nearly 50% increase was devastating, Cassidy said.
“It especially impacted our elderly neighbors and those still making payments on their homes,” she said. “It was rather ironic to see the word ‘affordable’ added to the park entrance signage.”
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Policy makers, tenants and housing advocates have said that the trend now affecting Golden Estates is a serious issue that could create ripple effects across the community. Mobile home park rent spikes undermine a rare affordable housing option, experts say, threatening to push tenants into less stable living scenarios.
Cassidy’s predicament is not unique as mobile home parks in Montana have been increasingly purchased by out-of-state investors eager to raise lot rents and recoup their costs. Now, the residents of two Missoula parks have joined forces to push back and keep their housing affordable.
In 2025, after Oak Wood notified tenants of an additional $150 increase at Harvey’s and Travois Village, another Missoula mobile home park it purchased in 2023, residents there began organizing with the Missoula Tenants Union. After pushback, the company lowered the increase for both parks to $50, bringing the lot rent at Harvey’s to $670, according to the tenants’ union.
To help her neighbors stay in their homes, Cassidy joined the Harvey’s Tenants Union last fall, which organized with the Missoula Tenants Union and union members from Travois Village. The unions are pushing for a new lease with lower rents and other protections for residents.
“Nobody deserves to be exploited by an out-of-state company that is only concerned with profit and with filling the pockets of investors,” Cassidy said during the Harvey’s Tenant Union launch event last Friday.
Dozens of union members and supporters gathered last week to celebrate the Bonner park’s supermajority tenant union. A supermajority union represents more than 65% of occupied units. The Harvey’s Tenants Union represents about 67%, or 26 of the 39 homes.
Members of the Harvey’s and Travois Village unions have also formed a joint bargaining team and are meeting with Oak Wood representatives to demand changes to their leases. During their first meeting in January, the company agreed to strike a clause from the lease that would give it the first right to purchase tenants’ homes if they decide to sell, said Erik Brilz, a bargaining team member and Travois Village resident. The company also agreed to keep meeting with tenants and visit Missoula in April, Brilz told the crowd.
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As a resident-owned community, Old Hellgate Village in Missoula is cooperatively owned and democratically run by residents. Instead of paying rent to a private landlord, they pay the cooperative.
“At no point in the history of Missoula have tenants generated such meaningful power and actually won concessions from their landlord in this way,” he said. “These results prove this process is working.”
Oak Wood did not respond to MTFP’s requests for comment.
The two mobile home parks purchased by Oak Wood are among a growing number across Montana owned by out-of-state companies. In January 2025, Texas-based Axia Realty Partners purchased Katoonah Lodges Mobile Home Park in Missoula, a 55-plus community located off Mullan Road. Residents of Helena’s Golden Estates Mobile Home Park recently raised concerns about rent increases after a Tennessee-based owner bought the property.
Brilz said while Oak Wood’s initial response to the union is promising, there’s more work to be done. The bargaining team presented a list of top priority demands to Oak Wood, including that the company walk back recent lot rent increases and cap annual increases at no more than 3% tied to a cost-of-living adjustment.
Shawn Belobraidic, a Harvey’s resident and bargaining team member, said mobile home parks are promoted to out-of-state investors as profitable because they can pass costs onto vulnerable residents who typically don’t push back. Belobraidic said the union knows Oak Wood can afford their demands, while the rent increases have “broken the bank” for many residents.
“We are going to demand a fair lease that treats us with the dignity and respect that we deserve,” he said. “We are not vulnerable, we are informed. We are not going to be taken advantage of. We are organized. We are not going to back down.”
Harvey’s resident Jacquie Thompson asked the crowd to support the union’s mission. Thompson said she moved to the Bonner park after retiring in 2019 because it was small, quiet and the $335 lot rent was affordable. Now, with rent and fees more than double that amount and her monthly fixed income at roughly $1,000, that’s no longer the case, she said.
“If rent increases again next year the way it has the past two years, I will no longer be able to stay in my home,” Thompson said. “I will be homeless. … And I’m not alone. Most of the residents at Harvey’s are seniors or people on fixed incomes. We simply cannot absorb these kinds of increases.”
The unions are also pushing for clauses in their leases that require Oak Wood to notify them if it plans to sell the parks and to grant tenants a first right of refusal, giving them the first shot at buying the parks, Cassidy said. The supermajority of Harvey’s residents favor purchasing the property and forming a cooperative to do so, she said.
Montana has 22 resident-owned communities (ROCs), including five in Missoula County. The communities are cooperatively owned and democratically run by residents, and the rent goes only to bills and community upkeep, according to ROC USA.
Cassidy, the longtime Harvey’s resident, told MTFP she had contacted NeighborWorks Montana, an organization that helps residents form cooperatives. Adam Poeschl, a ROC acquisition specialist, previously told MTFP that the first step is a willing seller. Cassidy said she hopes the union can convince Oak Wood to sell to the residents.
“It is the only viable option to stay in our homes, to allow us to continue living here, to keep our neighborhood intact, to provide us the opportunity to make our own choices, to have affordable lot rents, to experience rent security and stability and empower us to live in dignity,” Cassidy said.
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