‘They’re Bleeding Us Dry’: Rent Hikes, Evictions in California Mobile Home Parks

This story is part of How We Get By, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the full series here.

When Clara Faria read her rent statement, her heart stopped. Her monthly payment would more than triple, rising from $297 per month to $995. She had four days to make the payment or be charged a $50 late fee.

She sank into the brown leather chair next to her formica-coated kitchen table, where she’d opened her mail for decades. She had heard neighbors were getting rent increases, but said she hadn’t received a notice herself. She had hoped she would be spared, but the reality was worse than she had imagined.

“I thought ‘I don’t have the money,’” Faria said of the statement, issued on Dec. 31, 2024, and due by Jan. 5, 2025. “I figured by the end of the year, I’m going to be homeless.”

Faria, 91, lives alone on a fixed income in a one-bedroom manufactured home at the Willow Mobile Home Park in the East Bay town of San Pablo. Old family photos, crucifixes and saints adorn her living room walls. An oversized photo of an American flag peaks out from the hallway, declaring, “The lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts him, and I am helped.”

Faria’s experience is part of a growing pattern across California, where mobile home residents — many of whom own their homes but rent the land beneath them — are increasingly vulnerable to steep and repeated rent hikes. Harmony Communities, which manages her park in San Pablo, has faced criticism from residents, advocates and local officials for aggressive rent increases and opaque ownership structures.

In a state where just 18% of people can afford to own their homes, mobile home parks offer a rare bastion of affordable ownership. But advocates say people living in these communities have become more exposed as investors seek higher returns.

Faria said she moved into her home in 1997 using an insurance payout after a previous mobile home burned down, drawn by the park’s affordability and its designation for seniors.

That changed when the rent increase notice from Stockton-based Harmony Communities arrived. It was the first signal that more aggressive tactics were replacing the quiet stability of Willow Mobile Home Park.

A KQED analysis of property records reveals Harmony Communities has grown into a major player in the industry. The property-management company has managed operations of around 100 parks since 2004, and as of 2025, was actively managing roughly 80 parks statewide.

While the company claims its practices ensure “long-term viability,” interviews with nearly two dozen residents and lawyers point to a recurring pattern: Harmony assumes control, substantially raises rents, and in some cases, employs tactics residents and advocates describe as aggressive, leaving low-income tenants susceptible to displacement.

While a representative from Harmony said the company sent a notice of the rent increase to Faria in September 2024, Faria maintains she did not receive it until just a few days before the rent was due.

Then, about nine months later, in September 2025, Harmony sent a new notice informing residents their rent would again increase in January 2026 — this time by an average of 30%, according to rent statements reviewed by KQED. Harmony said credits, in some cases, reduced the amount residents ultimately paid.

For Faria, the repeated increases were crippling. For residents interviewed by KQED, it was a pattern.

The company disputes that these cases reflect a broader pattern and described Faria’s example as unique, adding that each case is fact-specific and shaped by complex local regulations. In an email response to KQED, company representative Nick Ubaldi said Harmony is “committed to providing safe, clean, and affordable housing that remains sustainable for the long term.”

“Achieving this mission requires carefully balancing all relevant factors for success,” he said. “This includes respecting tenants’ strong preference for the lowest possible rents while also ensuring property owners receive a fair and reasonable return on their investment, allowing the business to succeed.”

When rent increases do come, the mobile home ownership structure makes relocating extremely expensive for residents and, in some cases, impossible, said Teri Williams, a mobile home resident in southern California who leads the nonprofit Mobile Home Resident Coalition.

“These residents are captive,” Williams said. “We’re at the mercy of park owners, and they know it.”

Meanwhile, Ubaldi said park operating costs are rising rapidly, with significant increases in insurance premiums and labor, while rental income is lagging behind.

“California is one of the most expensive states in which to live and operate a business,” he said. “While no one wants to see residents displaced from their homes, the financial burden of addressing affordability challenges should not fall solely on individual property owners.”

Lawmakers in Sacramento, however, are considering several proposals this year to strengthen protections for mobile home residents, including limits on rent increases. Some cities have adopted local rent caps, while residents themselves have organized tenant associations to fight rent hikes and, in some cases, are negotiating to buy the parks Harmony manages.

Willow residents said the second rent increase in two years was distressing, and that anxiety was compounded by confusing and conflicting messaging from Harmony.

Shortly after the company announced the second increase, Willow residents received a new document that appeared to contradict the first: “At the same time the rent increase becomes effective, the park will be issuing you a rent credit that is equal to the rent increase amount.”

Faria was baffled. She was initially told her rent would increase by $300. Now, it seemed her rent would stay the same. While Harmony said they had no plans to rescind the credit, it also described it as “discretionary” and said it could be “revoked or modified” with no apparent safeguards.

In an emailed response to questions from KQED, Harmony Communities said some rent increases cited in notices were offset by credits or arbitration processes, resulting in lower effective rents paid by residents. The company provided tenant ledgers, which it said reflect the reduced amounts.

Ubaldi acknowledged the conflicting messages and said the first notice was sent in error.

“When we identified the issue, we promptly sent a corrected letter that clearly outlined each resident’s credit amount and net increase,” he wrote in an email to KQED. “Any confusion was not intended, and the second letter was sent to resolve it.”

Matthew Davies, co-founder of Harmony Communities, said the company purchased Willow nearly a decade ago and agreed to provide “rent subsidies” to residents for five years and has since invested “hundreds of thousands of dollars” into improvements at the park.

Faria said that when she called Harmony about the first rent increase, she was told she’d have to pay or face eviction, an account the company did not directly address in its response to KQED’s questions. By the time the second notice arrived, followed by the mixed messaging, she felt helpless and afraid.

“Those people are completely bleeding us,” she said. “And they don’t care.”

A week later, she got a new letter in the mail.

This one told her that despite the credit, her rent would still increase by $100, bringing her total rent up from $995 to $1,095.

The letterhead listed Creekside Village MHC LLC, while contact information directed residents to Harmony Communities, reflecting a centralized management structure. Madeline Bankson, a housing researcher with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, said this type of ownership is part of a broader industry pattern.

“The LLC does three things,” Bankson said. “It reduces liability, adds tax benefits under the tax code; the sort of secret added bonus is obscuring ownership.”

Davies started investing in mobile home parks in 2004 with his father, Bruce Davies, according to Ubaldi and a 2024 interview Matthew Davies conducted with a YouTube vlogger. Davies said Harmony had amassed a nearly $700 million portfolio in its first 20 years of operations.

In a 2021 interview with Multi-Housing News, Davies described Harmony’s approach as improving communities while keeping housing attainable.

“We look for communities we think will have long-term stability in areas where there’s a strong need for affordable housing and where we believe the local jurisdictions will be supportive of our efforts,” Davies told the trade publication.

Harmony operates dozens of mobile home parks across California, but individual LLCs and family trusts own the parks themselves. Documents filed with the California Secretary of State show the managers and members controlling the LLCs are often family members, relatives and Harmony employees.

As of November 2025, Harmony listed 29 mobile home parks it manages on its website. That list has since been removed. A broader search of property records identified about 100 parks associated with the company. Those include properties that had previously been listed on its website and where the owners’ principal address matched Harmony’s Stockton headquarters.

An analysis of business filings with the California Secretary of State found employees and family members tied to Harmony have an ownership stake in at least 84 of those parks. That includes parks owned or co-owned by members of the Ubaldi family and the Ubaldi Living Trust, whose successor trustee is Harmony spokesperson Nick Ubaldi.

“As an employee of Harmony Communities, and as a park owner myself, I manage the day-to-day operations of these parks,” Ubaldi said. “Our involvement in the industry dates back to the early 1980s, long before Harmony existed.”

According to Ubaldi, Harmony is responsible for day-to-day operations, including setting rents, managing leases, maintaining properties and handling tenant issues. For many residents, the company serves as the primary point of contact.

Records show at least 10 LLCs managed by Molly Thompson, Davies’ ex-wife. Bruce Davies shows up as the manager for 41 LLCs.

Bankson said that the lack of transparency can make it harder for residents like Faria to challenge decisions or for regulators to step in, especially when ownership and management are intertwined.

Harmony said its ownership structure is standard and publicly disclosed. Willow reflects the same pattern. Creekside Village Mobile Home Park LLC owns the park. Business filings name Bruce Davies as the LLC’s manager and list the owner’s mailing address as Harmony’s headquarters.

As Harmony grew its portfolio, it continued to raise rents on mobile home park residents — or facilitate the sale of their parks. Meanwhile, residents and local officials from Santa Barbara to Sonoma County have pushed back against proposed rent increases and park closures.

Ubaldi said these measures often have the opposite of their intended effect: By limiting rent increases, he said, the underlying land becomes more valuable as vacant property than it is as a park. He pointed to a property in Thousand Oaks, which he said has an estimated land value of $20 million if it were cleared for redevelopment, but only $4 million as an occupied mobile home park.

“This dramatic disparity illustrates how such policies can incentivize park closures, sales to developers, or conversions, ultimately reducing the stock of affordable housing rather than expanding it,” he said.

Officials in several cities haven’t seen it that way. In San Luis Obispo County, supervisors unanimously rejected a hardship petition filed on behalf of two Harmony-managed parks, concluding the company did not meet the standard needed to justify higher rents.

San José housing officials similarly denied a proposed rent increase at the Golden Wheel Mobile Home Park — another park owned by the Ubaldi family and managed by Harmony Communities — saying the owner failed to justify raising rents by about 10% for some of the park’s lowest-income tenants.

“They are a very well-known park owner, and these tactics, or this behavior, is pretty typical for them across the state,” Emily Hislop, rent stabilization and eviction prevention manager for the city, said at a Housing and Community Development Commission meeting in February 2025.

At Willow, Ubaldi said the two increases were intended to “bring rents to market.”

“We do our best to review all available data and metrics, including comparable properties, occupancy rates, local economic conditions, and recent leasing and sales activity, to arrive at a fair and competitive market rent for Willow,” he said.

Faria and her neighbors were fed up with the higher charges and confusing messaging. They began to organize.

Linda Jackson, another senior at the park, was the spearhead. She learned that Creekside Mobile Home Park, another Harmony-managed property in San Pablo, was also facing increases.

Jackson spread the word: “I said, ‘I need five people to stand with me so that we can get [Harmony] off our backs and make it so that we can live more comfortably.’ I swear to God, the next day, I had 35 people.”

Faria was one of them. She quickly became a leading voice at San Pablo City Council meetings, where residents urged local leaders to adopt a measure that would limit rent increases for mobile home park tenants.

“I never imagined at my age I would be choosing between paying rent, buying food and getting my medication,” Faria told council members on Dec. 1. “I cut back everything I can, but these rent hikes are more than I can bear.”

At the following meeting on Dec. 15, the council approved a Mobile Home Assistance Program, offering a one-time, $1,000 grant to help offset rent hikes. But residents said the relief, while welcome, fell short.

“This Band-Aid is giving us more stress,” Jackson said.

With only short-term help on the horizon, Faria said it’s difficult to plan for the future.

“I live on Social Security alone,” she said. “I just can’t pay that extra money.”

As disputes like the one at Willow unfold across California, it is drawing attention to the vulnerability of mobile home park residents and the patchwork of local protections. Some state lawmakers are working to bolster protections, even as industry groups challenge some efforts in court.

“It has shined an unfortunate light on the fact that the whole layer of rental opportunity has sort of gone without heightened scrutiny or a lot of targeted political action,” said Tyler Pullen with UC Berkeley’s Terner Labs.

Unlike most apartment renters who have a statewide rent cap and standard protections, mobile home park residents are only protected by local ordinances that vary widely from city to city. Some communities cap rent increases or require park owners to justify higher rents. Others have few protections, leaving residents subject to large increases.

In January, state Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, introduced AB 1543, a bill that would impose a statewide rent cap on all mobile home parks, limiting annual increases to the lower of 3% plus inflation or 5%.

“It’s designed to help the owners of these mobile homes who make that initial investment and then their rents are increased substantially more than other renters across California,” Quirk-Silva said.

It’s the second time she’s tried to pass such legislation. The first was AB 978 in 2021, which got whittled down during committee hearings to narrowly apply to mobile home parks that straddle two jurisdictions. Only a handful exist across the state.

Ubaldi said rent caps are not the solution, maintaining that they discourage investment and reduce housing supply over time.

He recognized that tenants might see things differently and argued it should be up to local governments to fill the gap between the rising costs that park owners face and the plight of low-income tenants who can’t afford rent increases.

Many mobile home residents — including Faria and her neighbors — aren’t waiting for state legislation. Where local ordinances and state legislation fall short, they’re building tenant associations, challenging Harmony Communities in court, and, in at least one case, buying their park.

In Petaluma, residents at a mobile home park managed by Harmony faced proposed rent hikes of up to 300% in a single year, prompting city-mandated arbitration and ongoing legal disputes involving the city, park owners and residents.

At the San Rafael RV park, owned by Harmony, residents organized a tenants union and filed a lawsuit in late 2025 alleging unlawful rent increases, harassment and retaliatory behavior.

At a park in Fresno County, residents took a different approach. After five years of organizing and fighting rising rents, a group of mostly Oaxacan farmworkers purchased the park from Harmony and converted it into a limited-equity housing cooperative. Harmony said the Fresno property had longstanding safety and infrastructure issues before its involvement, citing fires, code violations and government intervention.

In San Pablo, residents at Willow and Creekside mobile home parks are weighing their own options, including forming a formal tenants’ association. Jackson said the group is also working with the local nonprofit Rising Juntos to place a measure limiting rent increases at mobile home parks on San Pablo’s November ballot.

The $1,095 Faria now pays for rent, along with other fees, including sewer, trash and drainage, amounts to about 55% of her Social Security income. She considered cutting her cable TV to save money.

At her age, she thought she’d be settled. Instead, she said, she feels like she’s bracing for the worst.

In February, she wrote a letter to Harmony: “I ask God to please let me die before you evict me.”

As of mid-April, Faria is still waiting for a response.