Why Responsible Operators Should Stop Fighting and Start Shaping
by Ali Nasir
Let me say something that will make a significant portion of the manufactured housing community industry uncomfortable: We are losing the rent control fight, and the way we are losing it is making our situation worse.
I’ve spent over 44 years in this industry, so I understand the economics of manufactured housing communities better than most. I know what infrastructure upgrades cost, what proper maintenance requires, and what investors need to see to deploy capital into this asset class. I’m not writing this as an outsider or an idealist who doesn’t understand how the business works. I’m writing this as someone who believes our current strategy is accelerating the very regulatory outcomes we claim to fear.
The Political Reality
Here is the political reality as it stands today. Manufactured housing-specific rent stabilization legislation is advancing across California, New York and New Jersey. It is gaining momentum in Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Connecticut. The legislative pipeline is expanding, not contracting.
The resident advocacy networks organizing around this issue are better funded and more politically sophisticated than they were five years ago. And the broader cultural moment, defined by widespread anxiety about housing affordability, is providing them with tailwinds that our industry lobbyists simply cannot match dollar for dollar, headline for headline.
Our default response has been aggressive lobbying opposition. In some states, this has successfully delayed legislation. In others, it has hardened positions on the other side and produced worse outcomes than a negotiated framework might have.
More importantly, every dollar spent fighting this battle is burning political capital we will need for other fights: zoning reform, title reclassification, financing access, and infrastructure permitting. We are spending irreplaceable credibility defending a position that is, in a growing number of markets, no longer defensible.
I want to be precise about what I am not arguing. I am not arguing that rent control is good policy in the abstract. I am not arguing that manufactured housing communities should accept whatever framework tenant advocates propose.
I am arguing something narrower and, I think, more practically important: responsible operators have more to gain from shaping reasonable regulatory frameworks than from demanding deregulation from outside the policymaking process. Furthermore, the operators who will actually thrive under partial rent control are not the ones most loudly opposing it.
Think carefully about who benefits most from the current unregulated environment. It is not the operator who has invested $2 million in infrastructure over the past decade, maintained competitive lot rents, and built genuine goodwill with residents. That operator can justify their rent structure. Their residents largely understand the value exchange. Their communities have low turnover, strong occupancy, and manageable political exposure.
The operators extracting maximum value from the current environment are those pursuing aggressive annual increases, sometimes as high as 10%, 15%, even 20%. And they are doing it in communities where deferred maintenance has been the strategy and exit planning has been the horizon.
These operators are generating the political energy that is driving legislative action. They are the case studies in every testimony before every state housing committee. Their residents are the ones showing up at town halls, calling local news stations, and organizing with advocacy groups.
The uncomfortable irony is that our industry’s lobbying infrastructure, built and funded substantially by responsible operators, is defending a status quo that most benefits operators whose practices are generating the political blowback we are all absorbing. We are collectively protecting the model that is burning down our reputation.
Shaping Reasonable Regulatory Frameworks
Let me be specific about what shaping reasonable regulatory frameworks might actually look like, because I think the industry defaults to imagining the worst possible version of this engagement.
California’s manufactured housing rent stabilization discussions have included provisions recognizing the difference between land lease income and capital improvement costs. New Jersey’s legislative conversations have involved carve-outs for documented infrastructure investment. These are not gifts. They are the result of operators and advocates sitting in the same room and acknowledging that there is a legitimate difference between responsible lot-rent management and predatory extraction.
An operator who has been increasing rents at 3% to 4% annually, investing in community infrastructure, and maintaining resident relationships has nothing to fear from a stabilization framework that caps increases at CPI-plus or includes reasonable capital improvement pass-throughs. That operator is already operating within the framework.
The only operators who face material business disruption from well-designed stabilization legislation are those whose models depend on above-market annual escalations. If you are reading this and your underwriting depends on 8% to 12% annual lot-rent increases to hit your return projections, I understand why you oppose any framework that limits that.
But I would ask you to consider two things. First, those communities are already politically exposed in ways that create operational and reputational risk regardless of what happens legislatively. Second, if that model becomes legislatively constrained, a well-designed framework negotiated with industry participation will be substantially more workable than whatever gets passed after years of adversarial opposition.
There is also a longer-term strategic argument here that I don’t hear discussed enough within industry circles. Manufactured housing is the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the United States. That is a genuine and important social fact.
We should be building our industry’s political identity around that reality. We should be in housing policy conversations as partners and stakeholders, not simply as a defensive industry protecting its margins. The more we position ourselves as opponents of housing affordability policy, the more we invite the kind of regulatory attention that treats us as part of the problem.
Conversely, operators who engage constructively with stabilization frameworks, who can demonstrate community investment, who show up to housing policy conversations with data about resident outcomes and infrastructure commitments, those operators are building political relationships and reputational capital that will matter across every regulatory domain we operate in. They are the ones who will have calls returned by housing agency staff when they need permits. They are the ones whose testimony carries weight when financing policy is being shaped. Political capital is fungible, and right now our industry is spending it in ways that are not generating returns.
I want to acknowledge directly that this position creates genuine discomfort within the industry. I have had these conversations. I know the response: if we engage, we legitimize; if we accept any framework, we invite more. This is not an unreasonable concern. Legislative frameworks, once established, do expand. Precedents matter.
But I would ask my colleagues to evaluate this concern against the realistic alternative. In markets where our opposition has been most aggressive such as coastal California, urban New Jersey, and the New York metropolitan area, are we winning? Are we maintaining the policy environment we want? Or are we delaying the inevitable while spending resources and relationships in ways that leave us worse positioned when legislation eventually passes?
In politics, the question is rarely whether something will happen. The question is whether you will have shaped it when it does. Here is what I would actually recommend for operators thinking about how to position themselves.
Strategic Positioning
Start by auditing your own practice. If your communities are genuinely well-maintained, if your rent increases have been reasonable and documented against costs, and if your resident relationships are functional then you have nothing to fear from a well-designed regulatory framework. You should be willing to say so publicly, and you should be willing to engage with policymakers who are developing these frameworks.
If your portfolio includes communities where that audit produces uncomfortable answers, the time to change course is before legislation passes, not after. Residents notice investment. Relationships are built over years. The communities with organized, adversarial resident bases are the ones that ended up as case studies driving legislation. That is a manageable problem to address proactively.
At the industry level, we need to distinguish between fighting all regulation and fighting bad regulation. There are poorly designed stabilization frameworks that would genuinely constrain responsible operators. Fighting those specifically, with credible data and alternative proposals, is defensible and winnable. Fighting stabilization legislation categorically, as an industry, signals that we are protecting practices we cannot defend in public. Policymakers and the public are drawing exactly that conclusion.
The manufactured housing industry has a genuine story to tell about affordable housing, community stability, and working-class homeownership. That story is compelling. We should be telling it from inside the policy conversation, with the credibility that comes from demonstrating we have earned a seat at the table.
The operators who will succeed in the next decade are those who have been running communities they are proud to defend publicly. The question is whether our industry’s strategy will reflect that reality, or whether we will continue burning resources to protect a diminishing position and take everyone down with us in the process.
