This is Part 5 of “Unsettled Ground,” a collaboration between The Pulp and the University of Montana Public History Program. This exhibit turns to the recent history of mobile home parks, outlining the emergence of new patterns of ownership — from local owners to out-of-state investors and private equity firms — and the parallel development of tenant activism, organizing and resident-owned cooperatives. Find the other parts of this reporting project here.
Since at least the 1990s, Missoula has had housing affordability problems due to a combination of low-wage service jobs, a constricted housing supply, and high cost of living (including rent) resulting from its high desirability as a place to live. For mobile home park residents, further layers of difficulty have resulted from the historic exclusion and marginalization of parks and, more recently, the buying up of parks by outside investors, including large real estate investment firms. Those ownership changes have often come with aggressive rent increases, new park rules, and unresponsive management.
Faced with these challenges, residents have organized, protested, formed cooperatives and otherwise forged community bonds and institutions to protect their homes.
In Missoula, the first wave of activism came in 1991, when various “resident associations” formed in response to what they saw as unfair management and evictions. In 1991, the Travois Residents Association organized against new park rules which banned vegetable gardens, disallowed large dogs, and limited visitor parking. “I still remember that very distinctly,” recalled Maria Cassidy, who lived in Harvey’s at that time, the sister park to Travois. Cassidy added: “We all brought our chairs, and we sat down … we were all upset, but we didn’t know what to do.” In addition to negotiating with local park owners, Missoula mobile home residents organized for tenants’ rights generally, ultimately joining other mobile home residents from across the state to successfully lobby for a “Good Cause” eviction bill in 1993.
View the full-size timeline here.
Mobile home residents have also responded to these challenges by forming Resident Owned Communities, or ROCs: cooperatives in which residents collectively purchase and own the land beneath their homes. Residents then democratically elect a board to manage the property and community. Several organizations help residents do this, especially Neighborworks Montana. Missoula formed its first ROC in 2013 and several have since followed.
Residents do not always have the opportunity or means to buy the land beneath them and form a cooperative. Mobile home parks are profitable, so investors are often eager to buy them and have more means and agility to do so. Missoula in the 2020s saw another wave of investment in mobile home parks, this time from even bigger real estate investment firms. This in turn has led to another wave of tenant organizing, this time with the help of the Missoula Tenants Union. In 2025, Travois residents formed a union, followed in 2026 by several other mobile home parks. In April 2026, Travois and Harvey tenants unions negotiated a successful, historic agreement with Oak Wood Ventures, the real estate investment firm that owns their parks.
The foundation for mobile home residents’ activism and organizing has been community. “This is our family community, and we’ve all moved here knowing that we’re safe and affordable, and… can help each other out and make it okay,” Kathy Kelly, resident and union member from Travois Village said. Building community takes work and courage. Many residents are afraid of the power owners hold over them. “People are afraid of Oakwood,” another Travois resident, Jim Wolf, said. But residents have nevertheless stood up for themselves. “We have a union,” said Maria Cassidy of Harvey’s Mobile Home Park. “We have formed the union. And by law, they cannot retaliate against us. They can try, but it’s not lawful. Somebody has to stand up against them.” Part of the work of building solidarity and community is about openness. “If you want community, you have to be vulnerable,” said Jackson Sapp, a Missoula Tenants Union organizer.
All of these aspects of community building, that apply at the level of mobile home parks, also apply to the whole Missoula community in how it responds to housing challenges. “I think part of what’s so amazing about this community is how diverse and vibrant it is. And that’s… on all of us to help support and maintain that diversity and vibrancy,” said Kaia Peterson, the director of Neighborworks Montana. “So, sort of a call to all of us to continue to be creative about how we support those neighbors and how we continue to engage in making sure Missoula is the place we all are proud to live.”
In the timeline above, we trace the interwoven stories of mobile home park ownership, tenant organizing, community building, and the challenge of housing affordability in the Missoula community.
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