Coincidentally or providentially, Gwen Ifil of PBS had Carlos Watson of Ozymandias (ozy.com) media, a special report on mobile home parks in the U.S. and Silicon Valley. Following the links of their coverage made me realize that if we are not going to turn the tenants into owners nor are we (by eminent domain) taking responsibility of Buena Vista stewardship as part of the public sector and community service, then we are stupid to limit the search, as Simitian and Graves apparently have done to those who don’t pay taxes (the so called “Non-profits” which to me just means they fill out different forms than they do at their day jobs).

There’s a guy named Rolfe (who actually went to Stanford but owns no parks in Cali) who seems very knowledgable on the industry — he gives courses on mobile home park investing. (If he can fly out Peter Kageyuma for $5K to talk about dragging a stuffed donkey thru town surely we can edify our actions here with a talk with Rolfe if we cannot get him out here by 5/26). Zell owns thousands of trailer home parks. There are 8 million trailer homes in America.

My point is that Mr. Jisser is not the biggest swingin’ dick (if you excuse the expression) in this racket, by far and we should not treat him as such.

It seems like if all we are doing is forcing a deal and get the BVs a new landlord, the industry will beat a path to our doors to get in on the action. As in, our $16-$20 probably goes twice as far if we open up to the actual market and not just the pork barrel trotted out by our Mr. Joe. Or, Joe’s strategy is costing us millions.

Come to think of it, I think we should try to broker a deal for one of these high rolling-type mobile park cowboys to work with Sobrato to bring a new park to the defunct Fry’s land.

Let’s double down on the double-wides, y’all.

Mark Weiss

http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/the-trailer-parks-of-silicon-valley/40612

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/the-cold-hard-lessons-of-mobile-home-u.html?_r=0

stanford had a trailer park from 1967 to very recently
https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/resed/profiles/regular/manzanita-park

http://www.lillyandcompany.net

i sent notes to both Mobile Homes U (rolfe) and lilly. both have numbers as well.

outtro: my former client has a band called Double Wide which I didn’t realize was a trailer park reference

and1: Rabbi Janet Marder of Beth Am, on the situation, from a 2012 sermon.