Multimillionaire Frank Rolfe boasts of buying up trailer parks and sharply increasing charges to low-income tenants faces lawsuit for doing just that

A multimillionaire trailer park landlord who boasts that he makes big profits by buying up cheap trailer parks and immediately increasing rents is being sued for allegedly doing just that.



Frank Rolfe, the US’s 10th-biggest trailer park owner and co-founder of a bootcamp designed to teach other people how they too can become millionaires from mobile homes, is being sued for allegedly breaching rental contracts by nearly doubling bills for tenants at a trailer park in Austin, Texas.



The move comes as trailer parks have become increasingly controversial investments. Billionaire Warren Buffett was forced to defend the high-interest loans one of his companies gives to low-income trailer park buyers at his annual shareholder meeting earlier this month.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Frank Rolfe teaches wannabe trailer park owners how to get rich from other people’s poverty.

Rolfe’s residents, who are facing eviction from their homes, said Rolfenearly doubled their combined rent and utility bills almost immediately after buying the North Lamar mobile home park in an immigrant neighbourhood in northern Austin.



The residents have clubbed together to take legal action against Rolfe, who owns about 160 trailer parks across the country and runs Mobile Home University, a school for would-be trailer park owners that instructs its students to make money by raising the rents on “day one”.



Natalia Santiago, one of the North Lamar park residents facing eviction for not paying the higher rent Rolfe demands, said: “I have lived in this community for about 24 years. I have four living children, and we truly enjoy living here. I have worked all of these years cleaning homes and buildings and I want to continue doing so to provide for my family.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Natalia Santiago’s statement as part of North Lamar residents’ lawsuit. Photograph: Handout

Santiago is one of about six North Lamar residents who were issued with 72-hour eviction notices for failing to pay higher rents and new utility and car parking charges demanded by Rolfe’s company. The residents say they signed 12-month contracts with the previous owner on lower rents which also included all water, gas and drainage bills and did not charge for car parking.

Rolfe denied that the rent increases are a breach of contract. He said most of the 69 trailer pad sites are rented on a month-by-month basis and “each lease length has been documented and are honored”. “The rent is going up between $60 and $100 per month (depending on what the tenant’s original lease amount was, which vary). Rents are going to $450, and to double they would have to be at $690,” he said. Rolfe did not respond to questions about the new utility and car parking charges.

Abel Trujillo, who has lived in the park with his family for eight years, said Rolfe’s company increased his overall rent and utilities bill from $390 to $608 when it bought the park for $1.5m in January.

Trujillo, who was also ordered to leave his home within 72 hours, said many of the residents cannot afford to pay the higher rents – and have no way of raising the thousands of dollars it will cost to move the trailer, which most of the families own. “This is causing an outrage within our community,” he said. “It is unfair to be charged such high rental fees for just a lot – we own the mobile homes.”

During a recent Mobile Home University bootcamp weekend Rolfe explained to his students, who are charged $2,000 to learn his tricks of the trade, that: “Raising the rent is typically part of the day one purchase, because often the ‘mom and pop’ [previous, family-run owner of a park] has not raised the rent in years so it’s far below market.”

Rolfe, and his business partner Dave Reynolds, typically raises rents by 10% a year – far above inflation which is running at an annualised rate of 1.8% – and Rolfe boasts that their “world record” rent increase went “from $125 to $275 in one month”.

He tells his students that tenants are more likely to be encouraged to put in a few more hours at Walmart or other low-paying jobs than find the $3,000-$5,000 it costs to move their trailer to another park. Most of the North Lamar tenants are Spanish-only-speaking Latino immigrants working manual labour jobs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Demonstration against evictions at a trailer park in Austin, Texas Demonstration at the North Lamar Community Mobile Home Park. Photograph: Jana Birchum

Gregorio Casar, an Austin city councillor, said the residents and their families face “becoming homeless just to make a bit more profit so a couple of guys from Colorado [Rolfe and Reynolds] can buy a speedboat”.

“It is a ruthless business model. The investors have bragged in public about how they can make such a high return from relentlessly raising rents from people on very low incomes,” he said. “People here are having to take second or third jobs just because someone from out of state wants to make more money.”

Casar said he would demand policy changes to better regulate trailer parks in Austin, but in the North Lamar case legal action could be taken because the rent increases breach signed yearly rental agreements.

“These are hard-working, working-class and working-poor families – the mechanics, farmers, nursing aides of our city. They are facing homelessness or being forced to find places to live with family members,” he said. “It seems to be what they [Rolfe and Reynolds] describe as their business model – banking on the fact that people are going to be poor and be desperate for affordable housing.

“They hope that people with less resources aren’t going to fight back, but this community knows their rights.”

Eviction proceedings have been put on hold for two weeks after the residents, represented by the North Lamar Residents Association, filed the lawsuit last week.