Christiansburg lies in the heart of the New River Valley in Virginia, a quiet Appalachian town with just over 20,000 residents. Every December, townspeople gear up for the annual “Christmas at the Market,” ceremonial tree lighting, and holiday parade; children wait in anticipation of Santa’s yearly cruise through town streets. Amid the holiday cheer, however, residents in the 174 units of Massie’s Mobile Home Park (Massie’s), located on the outskirts of Christiansburg, are facing a harrowing predicament. In August 2022, the nearly 50-year-old park was sold for $16.8 million to Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund previously exposed by the Panama Papers for placing investments in offshore tax havens. As fiery reds and golds set the mountains surrounding the town ablaze, eviction notices made their equally shocking appearance on doors at Massie’s. Over the next few months, the tenants, including roughly 20% of Christiansburg’s school-aged children, came face-to-face with horrific neglect and housing instability.

Massie’s was founded in 1978 when a section of mountainous land was purchased for development by a Christiansburg local. The land was then transformed into a large mobile home park and locally-owned for the next 44 years. Comments on local management ranged from “he was a good guy; he let them [the tenants] pay late sometimes” to more negative views. Regardless, the mixed opinions in decades past were overwhelmingly more positive than when ownership of the park was taken over by the nondescript “Massie MHP LLC” in August 2022.

Immediately, it was clear that the new owners of the property were determined to keep a low profile. According to Montgomery County property records, the property was sold directly to Massie MHP LLC. Online records, however, revealed that another company, Homes of America LLC, was affiliated with the purchase of the park. Through various other limited liability companies such as Massie MHP LLC, Homes of America has bought up approximately 100 other parks in the United States over the past few years.

Therefore, when eviction notices turned up at doorsteps, tenants first called for greater transparency regarding the property owners. One of the tenants, a grandmother who has custody of her school-aged grandson, contacted the tenants’ union, fearing that she and her grandson would be evicted and forced to separate from the only community her grandson knew. It was at this time that Hannah Jones, an aide at the local elementary school and a staunch advocate for housing rights, started a personal investigation that unearthed both Alden Global Capital’s involvement in the park and the atrocious conditions the tenants were newly subjected to. 

Jones first settled in the Christiansburg area at the start of the pandemic and quickly found her place in the close-knit community. Even before her involvement in fighting the evictions at Massie’s, she had already worked on several eviction cases. Jones, who already witnessed two of her students relocate in response to eviction fears, is devastated by the situation at Massie’s. “It greatly disrupts a child’s education to uproot their whole life, have a new teacher, and have new classmates. I believe that stable bonds are one of the most important things to child development,” Jones explained. These concerns inspired her to embark on a lengthy campaign to uncover the truth behind the park’s takeover, protect her students, and advocate for the tenants’ right to housing.

Given only the address on eviction notices, Jones was able to identify the company’s P.O. box in Delaware. By linking the P.O. box address with several mobile home parks around the country, Jones discovered that the rent money sent to the P.O. box would then be forwarded to the Corporation Trust Center (CTC). The CTC has a shady history, known for serving as a tax haven for high-profile clients such as Apple and American Airlines. From this address, Jones identified an executive of Alden Global Capital as the original buyer of the park. It was clear that Homes of America LLC and Massie MHP LLC simply served as shell corporations to disguise Alden Global Capital’s involvement at Massie’s. This discovery prompted a slew of new questions, rather than answers. Jones’s online investigation into Alden Global Capital yielded meaningless results: the only text on the company’s official website is a simple logo and short description: “Alden Global Capital is an investment manager based in West Palm Beach, FL.”

Jones then shifted her focus to community-based advocacy. She spent hours handing out fliers and conducting door-to-door interviews on the living conditions at Massie’s. Alden Global had already placed bids on local newspapers, so Jones was hesitant to count on the support of the press to circulate news on the mass eviction. The situation of the residents was appalling: an elderly man was threatened with eviction over $12, a father with a young child lived in a trailer with a collapsed bathroom floor, and residents lived next to an open sewage pipe that fed hungry vultures. These maintenance issues are the responsibility of the park management, and maintenance costs are factored into the tenants’ rent. Despite this, the property manager “is barely ever there” and “has been very rude to the tenants,” according to Jones.

It is vital to view the struggles of the tenants in the context that the majority of residents have lived at Massie’s for only a few months, are disabled, are elderly, or are on fixed incomes. For many, Massie’s was the sole option that was affordable and provided immediate housing. The majority of residents often have no choice but to suffer through the neglect and exploitation experienced at the hands of Homes of America. 

To make matters worse, a recently-instituted online payment system forces tenants to pay high added fees and decreases the reliability of the payment process. Tenants have faced threats of eviction when they were unable to pay rent through the portal, and others have been charged rent for dates before they even moved in.  Furthermore, tenants’ housing choice vouchers are returned without being redeemed, leading to thousands in rent debt for tenants on housing assistance. With no contact information available through the online payment system, tenants are unable to voice their concerns. The denial of housing assistance, finicky payment system, and neglect of basic living conditions are horribly predatory practices that clearly seek to force financially vulnerable residents out of their homes.

After uncovering the grim fallout of the takeover at Massie’s, Jones has been working tirelessly on drafting tenant’s assertions. Tenant’s assertions serve as documentation for the numerous sewage, electricity, black mold, and water problems Massie’s tenants face and give landlords a set time frame to address issues before legal action will be taken. If living conditions do not improve, tenants can pay their rent into escrow, which holds the money until the landlords can maintain the property. Unfortunately, Jones notes that escrow “is not a good system for people who are struggling with poverty,” as a large sum of money is needed upfront to enter the arrangement. However, it is the best defense mechanism the tenants have against the landlords.

Moving forward, Jones will be gathering evidence from tenants in preparation for a January 6th court case against Homes of America for a recent water shutdown. In mid-November, Homes of America had an unpaid water bill on the property worth $14000. As a result, the tenants unexpectedly lost access to water for about a day. If the court case yields little progress, Jones eventually seeks to utilize escrow as a way for tenants to legally rent strike. In addition to legal action, Jones envisions tenants organizing “a march on the landlords, where we nonviolently protest the manager of the park with signs and calls for action.” The difficulty in such an approach, however, lies in the high rate of gun ownership in her community and the conservative nature of the area. Jones fears that the marches may take a dangerous turn, so such an escalation remains a last resort.

Moreover, government involvement in the mass eviction has been passive at best. The only assistance Jones received upon notifying the Attorney General about Massie’s water shutoff was a list of other public officials to contact. Jones also reached out to local and national representatives. Despite making countless calls, no responses were received. “Everyone’s shirking off helping or being responsible,” Jones says.

The exploitation of tenants at Massie’s is hardly a new phenomenon. According to research published by Princeton professor Matthew Desmond and MIT professor Nathan Wilmers, landlords make the greatest profit off properties in low-income areas. Properties in low-income areas net landlords $298 monthly, compared to $225 in middle-income and $250 in high-income neighborhoods. This is accomplished through a high “exploitation rate”, or the percentage of a property’s value that renters are required to pay each month. In high-poverty areas, exploitation rates can reach 25 percent, compared to 10 percent in low-poverty areas. On top of crushing rent prices, landlords in wealthier areas often leverage racial segregation, conviction history, and poor credit to trap tenants in a cycle of rent exploitation. 

As a result, mobile home parks such as Massie’s have become especially popular with wealthy companies and individuals. The rate of return on investment in mobile home parks is double that of the average investment trust return in real estate overall, making investment in mobile home parks particularly lucrative. Furthermore, lower-income tenants often have fewer resources to protest unethical practices exercised by investment firms in the interest of profit. At Massie’s, this means that Homes of America intends to drive the park to the brink of failure in hopes of gaining greater control over the real estate while maximizing profits. This nefarious plan has been a pattern for the Alden Global affiliate in the past: from Minot, North Dakota to Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Back in Christiansburg, by late November, the vacancy rate of Massie’s is up to 20 percent. Tenants struggle daily to adjust to new leases with heavy fees and unaddressed maintenance issues. Many will be forced to leave Christiansburg due to the lack of affordable housing options outside of Massie’s, while others have no choice but to stay. “The mass eviction is making real a lot of issues that haven’t quite touched Christiansburg before,” Jones observes, “Investment firms have their talons in our community, and they are determined to rip it apart.”