Candi Van Tassel
My name is Candi Van Tassel, and I live in Huguenot Estates, a manufactured home community owned by RHP Properties. I moved here because I thought it would be more affordable. I was previously living in NJ and had a house which I was struggling to pay for as a single mother.
Candi is smiling while a little girl sits on her lap.
Since I moved here, the costs have been outrageous. We are still paying over $800/month for lot rent, which is crazy since we have to do all the lot maintenance ourselves. Rent keeps going up and up, and most of us here are struggling. Between the cost of rent, propane, garbage, and electricity, it’s completely unfair considering the modest size of the property. We feel we’re being taken advantage of.
RHP doesn’t do anything within this community. There is no community pool and nowhere for kids to play or families to gather like in other manufactured communities. The roads aren’t maintained and leaves never get picked up. Water is constantly getting shut off, and when we do have water, we boil it because we don’t know if it’s safe to drink. Due to septic problems, which lasted nearly a year, I was unable to cook or do laundry without the system backing up. It was only after I got the health department involved that RHP finally sent someone out to dig up the lawn, where they found a broken, outdated pipe.
Between rent increases, billing “errors”, the lack of maintenance, and warnings for trivial things like having a ladder on your deck, we’ve had enough. Places like this are for people to be able to survive and make ends meet, but we can barely do that. It’s like we are all stuck. Again, I am a single parent! I am out of options besides selling my place and buying another home, but that wouldn’t necessarily improve the situation. I thought it would have been better, but I’m worse off than I was before I moved here. I recently lost my job, which makes things even harder.
We hope the lot rent in our community gets lowered! A lot lower! We would also like RHP to build a community center where we can throw birthday parties for our children, and a pool for everyone to go swimming. Finally, we need RHP to make proper repairs in the community instead of continuing to put bandaids on major problems. Many community members have lived here a lot longer than I have, and share my concerns about RHP never doing anything. However, they are fearful of the bully tactics and repercussions they may face by voicing their concerns. We can’t let RHP scare us into silence!
I never thought I would be in this position, living in a corporate-owned mobile home. NEVER! Unfortunately, I’ve already seen many people like me, who get evicted from their own homes due to unfair rent increases, and are left with nothing. The sad thing is that my story has, and will continue to happen, until we put a stop to greedy, corporate landlords.