Morganton mobile home residents organize against rent surge

For more than two decades, Julia Hughes said she has watched her lot rent at Idlewild Acres mobile home park on Henderson Mill Road creep up from $110 to the $500 she pays today. But when a new notice from management announced the rate would hit $700 for “a piece of dirt,” she joined neighbors in organizing a petition and protest against what they call predatory pricing and “corporation greed.”

Idlewild Acres — one of more than 50 mobile home parks across the region that tenants say are owned or managed by Manufactured Housing Properties, Inc. (MHP), Valleo Residential, and Gvest Capital — is facing steep lot rent hikes this summer, tenants and the petition state, with many receiving notices that their monthly payments will jump to $600 or $700 by Aug. 1.

Gvest Capital is a real estate investment firm affiliated through common ownership and leadership with MHP, which owns manufactured-home communities. Valleo Residential serves as the resident-facing property management and leasing arm for those communities.

Residents, including those who own their homes but rent the land beneath them, say increases have been pushed through before leases expire, far above local market rates and without corresponding improvements to aging infrastructure. Some tenants rent both the lot and mobile home, while others own their mobile homes outright and just lease the lot.

In recent weeks, tenants have launched a petition with the North Carolina Tenants Union (NCTU) and canvassed other mobile home parks in the area.

“While the rent goes up, basic maintenance across these parks has stopped,” the petition states. “The lot rent doesn’t even cover water, trash pickup, or lawn care anymore. Worse, when homes fell into dangerous disrepair — like floors literally falling through — management gave long-time renters a cruel ultimatum: ‘Buy the home as-is or move.’”

One tenant was forced to put plywood over her failing flooring to keep her 5-year-old, autistic child with a bone disorder from “breaking his neck,” Hughes said. “His bones break very, very easily.”

For Hughes, watching a neighbor nail down plywood to protect a medically fragile child was a breaking point.

She started the petition “because enough’s enough,” she continued. “We don’t have it to give them. People here are disabled, on fixed incomes, single mothers.”

As word of the situation has spread, others from across the region have reached out to support tenants. “I believe in their fight,” said Jeremiah Leonard, a Morganton resident who helped repair this single mother’s floors, arguing she has been “exploited by her landlord.”

He sees the act as an extension of “mutual aid,” a principle with deep roots in Appalachia. He said he acted out of a commitment to “solidarity and community,” stating that “we’ve gotten to a society where I don’t think that people want to fight; they just take it.”

Kevin Stanley, who said he has lived in Idlewild Acres for two-and-a-half years and been described by Hughes as her “right-hand man” throughout their organizing efforts, mentioned he has toured other mobile home parks these companies own. One near Asheville “needs to be condemned,” Hughes asserted. “They shouldn’t even be allowed to rent. It looked like a concentration camp,” Stanley added.

In a July 15 email reply to the NCTU regarding the petition, Gvest Capital’s director of land development, Susan Rosenblatt, disputed the claims that maintenance had stopped at Idlewild Acres. She wrote that a number of “capital improvements” had been completed, including “paved roads,” “paved drives,” “replaced one kiosk in park,” and “eroded ditch repaired,” and cited “281 work orders have been completed and closed.”

She also wrote that the rent increases would “remain in place.”

Victoria Frady, 24, said she bought her mobile home in 2023 with inheritance after her mother passed away. Since the announced rent increases, she has moved to McDowell County to live with a friend “who is already struggling,” while she tries to sell her mobile home to Idlewild Acres, whom she claims has been non-responsive.

Multiple tenants allege these companies have a history of raising rents before leases even end. When pressing the owners on justification for the rent increases, Frady claims she was told it was due to property taxes going up.

Idlewild Acres tenants argue the rent increases do not reflect market value for the area, especially given the lack of amenities and failing infrastructure.

“My old boss at Hardee’s, her dad owns a trailer, and he pays like $375 or $395,” Frady explained. “And that includes water and lawn care and trash collection. That’s standard. That’s the same way in Lenoir and in Hickory. There are plenty of other places that are even closer into town. This is out in the boondocks. We’re not around much. We have a Dollar General down the street and a gas station, and that is it.

“You can get an apartment for $700 now in Burke County,” she continued. “I’ve seen two‑bedroom, two‑bathroom for $850, which includes water and trash collection. It’s just ridiculous.”

In addition to what are perceived as unfair rent hikes, Stanley and Hughes cited multiple instances of people who bought their mobile homes but have never received their titles from management. That includes one person who has spent “four years asking for it,” Stanley claimed.

Regarding these allegedly withheld titles, Rosenblatt added in her July 15 email, “Before receiving your letter, our Sales Team had already begun contacting buyers to confirm how they would prefer to receive their titles. We are currently awaiting responses from those buyers.”

Rent hikes like these land hardest on tenants who bought their homes but have never received titles, leaving them, in some cases, stuck on lots they can’t legally move off, Hughes said.

“A mobile home is just like a vehicle,” she explained. “You buy a vehicle from a dealer, you get the title, you get the bill of sale, you take it to the tag office, and you transfer it so you can get that vehicle on the road.”

The petition lambasts “wealthy out-of-town investors” they believe are merely “looking to extract massive profits from working people.”

Petitioners’ demands include the lot fees be returned to a “fair market rate,” community infrastructure be fixed to “ensure basic habitability,” and for management to “negotiate in good faith” and “end the deceptive ‘buy or move’ coercion tactics.”

On July 17, tenants and their supporters traveled to the companies’ Charlotte offices to demand a meeting and a pause on the planned increases, while raising broader concerns about title problems and lease‑to‑purchase arrangements they believe may violate state law.

Garrett Michael Ballard, an organizer with the Catawba Valley Democratic Socialists of America, which has been assisting Idlewild Acres tenants, said supporters gathered outside the Charlotte offices, where tenants delivered their petition and demanded a meeting with company leadership. He described a brief conversation between tenants, NCTU members, and Gvest Capital’s Susan Rosenblatt, who told them she could not change the rent and declined to identify the person directly responsible for the increases.

According to Frady, these companies “didn’t want to talk to us and wouldn’t sign an agreement,” noting “they said they would consider signing it but refused to take a copy. [Rosenblatt] claimed they hadn’t gotten emails from us, which is definitely not true. I can prove I’ve sent them multiple emails trying to get an offer.”

Ballard noted that Rosenblatt “seemed annoyed” by their presence, highlighting that several employees leaving the office appeared surprised when protesters explained what the company’s rent hikes and policies were doing to park residents.

Valleo Residential, MHP, and Gvest Capital did not respond to repeated requests for comment before publication.

It remains unclear if organizing efforts will change the minds of these companies, but the protesting tenants have a plan whether their demands are immediately met or not.

“I’m not paying my rent come August,” Hughes said. “I don’t have it. They can evict me, and I’ll go to court, and I will appeal it to a jury trial. And that takes about two years. Kevin’s doing the same thing. We’re going to get everyone in the park together to not pay.”

For now, Idlewild Acres has become a test case for how far corporate park owners can push rural tenants, and how far those tenants are willing to go to fight back.