Lessons Learned From North Lamar

No mobile home park in history has generated as much undeserved negative publicity as North Lamar in Austin, Texas.  Nothing we did was good enough for the Austin media. We saved the park from the wrecking ball. We brought the park back to life with new streets, entrance and lot-by-lot TLC. We made its ongoing operation possible by raising rents and fixing resident abuse of water and sewer. Finally, we allowed the residents to buy the park from us and gave them a huge amount of time to put the deal together with the non-profit group ROC. But even after selling it we are still hounded by the Austin media who can’t get over the fact that a capitalist approach succeeded where the city failed and that our business model was so well structured that they could not mess it up despite their endless efforts.