On the other side is those who need shelter, who don’t have unlimited income to afford the price of something that rises faster than they earn.
It doesn’t seem like a sustainable system.
I think this was best put into words in the form of "Houses are for living in, not for speculation"...
No, lack of supply is the problem. If there wasn't a lack of supply then housing wouldn't be an investment vehicle. Nimbys and over regulation has made it impossible to build which creates the lack of supply which is what drives the price up and makes the incentive to invest.
The issue is lack of supply. That is enforced by zoning, which is ultimately dictated by politicians, who know they won't get reelected if they make policy changes that gut a significant portion of their constituents' savings.
It's a fairly straightforward example of systemic dysfunction with no obvious solution.
China (like the USA) didn't let the market handle it. China built without letting market demand dictate supply. USA did the opposite, didn't builders meet supply. They try, they try all the time to built more, they get stopped by nimbys and over regulation.
You could literally surround the PE mobile home park with new, available lots. But as the article states, it is prohibitively expensive for these current "mobile" home owners to move-- their abodes are no longer mobile in any practical sense. And, as the article also states, many have porches and other bespoke add-ons-- dismantling and rebuilding would add even more thousands.
This should be obvious on the face of it-- if those homes were truly mobile, like campers, the camper owners would just scoot (as camper owners do) when PE tried to jack up the rent.
I'll go further and speculate that a sizable portion of the owners are fixed income with very little savings. You could even offer free lots 500 feet down the road and some still couldn't take you up on it (at least without racking up some seriously predatory CC or other debt). No doubt these PE firms had a firm grasp on the owners income levels, home ages/prices, and all kinds of other data before they bought up the lots and jacked up the rents.
Unless your grand plan to flood the market with mobile home lots includes a "let's teach the users" campaign to tell everyone in the next generation to buy campers instead of mobile homes, adding supply won't help them, either.
Edit: formatting, clarification
If the land is rented, the mobile home will often depreciate, much like a used car. Nobody wants to live in a mobile home with 1970's decor. So those owners are likely going to take a bath.