Montana mobile home park unions push ahead on lease negotiations

On what was the coldest day of April so far, residents of two Missoula-area mobile home parks sat down for lease negotiations with their Texas-based landlord — a first in Montana history, according to the Missoula Tenants Union.

Representatives from Oak Wood Ventures visited Missoula last week to meet with residents of Travois Village in Missoula and Harvey’s mobile home park in Bonner, which the company bought in 2023. After rent increases and other issues, residents of the parks formed two tenants unions and demanded Oak Wood meet with them to negotiate a new lease.

On Thursday, that meeting actually happened — a fact that tenant representatives celebrated as evidence that the parks’ new owners were taking resident concerns seriously. Even more exciting, members of the bargaining committee said, was the fact that tenants had secured some concessions about rental protections going forward.

“This is a testament to the power of getting together and fighting together,” Erik Brilz, a Travois Village resident and bargaining team member, told other residents after the Thursday meeting. “This is testament to the power of union organizing.”

Dozens of residents from both parks gathered around the picnic shelter in Travois Village to hear an update from Brilz and other bargaining team members following the in-person meeting with the Oak Wood representatives, including the company’s vice president and general counsel.

Brilz told the crowd that the Oak Wood representatives agreed to several conditions during the “intense” meeting that lasted more than an hour and a half, including a commitment to a negotiated lease and an option for two-year leases. Brilz also said the company representatives pledged to push internally for a 3% cap on future rent increases.

“This is absolutely not the end of our fight,” Brilz said. “We are just getting started here.”

Putting guardrails on rent increases is one issue looming large for residents. After Oak Wood purchased the parks in 2023, the company raised the rent on lots underneath tenants’ homes by $200 in 2024. The company proposed a $150 increase in 2025 but lowered it to $50 after pushback. Travois Village residents currently pay $695 per month in lot rent and Harvey’s residents pay $670.

Last year, the Missoula Tenants Union helped the Travois Village residents form a tenants union to represent the 273-home park in the Westside neighborhood. Shortly after, the group worked with Harvey’s residents to unionize the 39-home park in Bonner. Members of the unions formed a joint bargaining team and began meeting virtually with Oak Wood representatives in January.

This is the first time in Montana history that a tenants union has entered into negotiations with their landlord, won formal recognition and an agreement to collectively bargain over the next lease, said Jackson Sapp, a representative of Missoula Tenants Union.

Brilz told residents about other wins the unions secured after the Thursday meeting at the Missoula County Courthouse. In addition to recognizing the unions, Oak Wood agreed to not retaliate against them or individual residents and committed to negotiate a collectively bargained lease, Brilz said. The company is also open to a two-year lease term and agreed to change its payment system to reduce “convenience fees,” he added.

Brilz also said the company’s general counsel and vice president committed to advocating for a 3% cap on rent increases each year for two years and to include non-metered utilities, like water and sewer, in the rent. Those decisions will ultimately be up to the company’s shareholders and equity partners, Brilz said. Oak Wood also agreed to meet with NeighborWorks Montana to discuss the sale of Harvey’s park to the residents.

“So what does this mean overall? What it means is we can expect to see more predictability in our rent increase,” Brilz told the crowd. “We should not see shocks like $100 rent increases going forward.”

Conrad Morrison, Oak Wood’s general counsel, told Montana Free Press in an April interview the management team wants to help provide stability and support a long-term community at the parks.

Harvey’s park resident Shawn Belobraidic, who also sits on the tenants’ bargaining committee, said he’s excited about the potential sale of the park to the residents.

“In the long run, a resident-owned community is the ideal direction,” he said. Until residents secure that type of ownership, he added, tenants can at least continue to push for “clear communication” with management.

Belobraidic said the bargaining team is happy with the agreements they’ve gotten so far, though the discussion is not over.

“It really was the membership that was able to give us the moral force, the moral suasion that allowed the bargaining team to argue from the position of strength,” he said.

Belobraidic also credited local legislators and county commissioners, who met with the Oak Wood representatives before the bargaining meeting, with helping to push the effort forward. After the rent increase last summer, more than a dozen lawmakers, Missoula City Council members, Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis and the Missoula County commissioners sent letters to Oak Wood urging the company to keep rent affordable for residents.

Brilz told MTFP that while the company did not agree to all of the bargaining team’s demands, the meeting was “far from our worst possible expectations.” The union had planned to push for a rent reduction, which Brilz said Oak Wood was not open to discussing.

“I think getting at least some verbal commitment that they would try to get a rent reduction would make me feel a lot better, because there is a lot of suffering going on at these parks due to the rent increases that have already happened,” he said. “It is unfortunate that it doesn’t look like we’re going to make progress on that front. That being said, we have attained, I believe, the other objective, which was getting predictability in our rent increases and in our lease terms.”

Brilz said the Oak Wood representatives didn’t come with substantial decision making power and will have to run the big decisions by shareholders.

“We believe the Oak Wood management members that came out here, as well as the Oak Wood Properties company in general, do want to be perceived as partners in a process that will lead to a lease that tenants and Oak Wood can live with,” he said.

Lauren Cobb, vice president of Oak Wood Ventures, told MTFP that this is the first time the company has officially bargained with a tenants union but that it always listens to tenants’ concerns.

When asked to comment on the rent increases, Morrison, the general counsel, said the company has put significant money into the parks’ infrastructure, including streets, gazebos and “things you can’t see.” Morrison said that, after a purchase, the company works to be able to afford park improvements before they can stabilize rents.

Morrison said it was nice to meet people face-to-face and hear residents’ stories. Oak Wood’s management does not want to have continuous negotiations every nine months, he said, and supports longer lease terms to increase stability for the company and residents.

“I think both sides are going to walk away with wins,” Morrison said.

Ahead of the bargaining meeting, several local elected officials met with the Oak Wood representatives, including Rep. Jonathan Karlen, a Missoula-area Democrat whose district includes Travois Village.

Karlen, who attended the tenants’ gathering Thursday evening, told MTFP that after other mobile home parks in his district were sold to out-of-state landlords and saw big rent increases, residents told him they felt hopeless. In many cases, local elected officials can’t do anything to prevent park sales or rent increases, Karlen said. Recent proposals to protect mobile home park tenants have died in the Legislature. But the unions’ accomplishments show the power of working together, Karlen said, and left him feeling hopeful for the first time in a while.

“I’m hoping this is an example for all these other parks that, just because they might be facing an uphill battle, that they can organize and make a big difference,” Karlen said, adding that he was impressed by the fact that negotiations were underway between residents and the parks’ owner in the first place. “I mean, that’s not very common.”

The Travois and Harvey’s bargaining team said they will continue negotiations with Oak Wood through May, with a goal of reaching a finalized lease agreement by June 1.

“I believe that Oak Wood wants this and certainly as tenants we want this,” said Brilz, the bargaining team member. “I’m confident that this process that started has the potential to lead to a mutually agreeable lease that will get us predictability, and we’ll get some of our other minor miscellaneous lease terms agreed to as well.”

---

This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.