Does Major Development Firms = Heartless, Money-Hungry Monopolists?

Imagine yourself as a senior citizen who has worked your whole life and is currently living in your most prized investment, your mobile home. You are on a fixed income and your three major expenses are utilities, medication and rent for the land in which your mobile home is placed. Imagine that your rent currently costs $300 a month and you budget your money accordingly.

Now imagine that a major development firm has taken over your mobile home park and has raised your rent 30% (another $90) with only a ninety day notice. Imagine this mark up continuing throughout the course of one year with a total markup of 120%.

If you could fathom this happening, you can see the current distress many citizens in California and other major states such as Florida, Illinois, and Nevada are currently going through.
Many residents of the Blue Star mobile home park in California have become homeless due to the vast increases in their rent by the Kort and Scott development firm. The outrageous rent increases issued at unreasonable rates have caused these mobile home owners to sacrifice buying food and medication in order to not become delinquent on their rent payments. Due to the fact that moving their mobile homes to another location can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $30,000, many of these mobile home owners are at the mercy of major development firms such as Kort and Scott.

With only an hour to review and sign the twenty page lease agreement that Kort and Scott development firm has typed up, citizens of the Blue Star mobile home park find themselves stuck in agreement with not easily decoded clauses and stipulations that address the development firm’s rights to manipulate rent prices. Keep in mind that most of these mobile home owners are senior citizens and do not have very many other options, even if they did not fully agree to the terms and clauses.

Some people might say that this issue is not that major. They might say that these are one of the unfortunate externalities of capitalism. They may agree that development firms such as Kort and Scott are just doing “good business”.

But is corporate social responsibility not a part of doing “good business”?

Any big corporation has the ability to make money by any means necessary, but the real challenge is to do so in an ethical manner. Unfortunately many major development firms have failed to rise to the challenge. By raising these rents at a staggering rate, these development firms are contributing to the rise in the poverty rate; which in turn negatively affects the economy as a whole.

It is a known fact that Kort and Scott and other development firms would not have much of a business if there weren’t any mobile home owners to occupy rent space. So why bite the hand that feeds your company?