‘I’m a happy guy’: Gary Oakland finalizes mobile home parks sale as tenants strike to stay

Days after finalizing the sale of King Arthur Park and Mountain Meadows Estates, former landlord Gary Oakland wanted the Chronicle to write a nice story about him.

After four decades of ownership, Oakland is parting ways with the properties just a week after tenants launched Montana’s first rent strike in nearly half a century. And he’s not thrilled with what he sees as the sympathetic media coverage the effort has received.

“People like you who print their lies and publish it have done nothing but harm the reputation and desirability of living in the parks,” Oakland told the Chronicle.

In Oakland’s view, the actions of the tenants union, a chapter of Bozeman Tenants United, was simply a ploy to sabotage the sale of the properties, which apparently sold to a California-based private equity firm called Cabrillo Management.

“They put their best foot forward to screw up the deal and it didn’t work,” Oakland said. “Now they have to move on. I’m moving on. I’m a happy guy. I’m happy with the residents. I think they’re great people. They all seem to be happy.”

But the parks’ residents, some of whom can no longer afford their medications or Life Alert devices after a last-minute rent hike, maintain the sale isn’t the end of the story.

“Oakland has repeatedly increased the rent across the parks. At the same time, he has neglected maintenance, resulting in crumbling infrastructure, depleting the value of the tenants’ homes and compromising their safety,” an April 29 press release from Bozeman Tenants United states. “When they tried to request repairs, tenants were often met with eviction threats and harassment from property managers.”

Oakland called the maintenance claims “bogus”, arguing that the properties historically received clean reports from county health and water inspectors. In fact, what some tenants see as neglect Oakland said is actually doing them a favor.

“The maintenance out there might not be perfect, but to take it from good and safe to perfect is very expensive,” Oakland said. “My personal management philosophy was the tenants don’t want to pay more in rent to have everything perfect.”

The rent, however, has been going up. The 11% increase that went into effect May 1 brings lot rent to $950, a nearly 60% increase since 2021. Oakland said it’s just the cost of doing business. After all, he said, Bozeman is expensive for everyone, including landlords.

“We maintained rent increases that were in line with inflation and operation cost increases,” Oakland said. “It’s still one of the least-expensive places to live in Bozeman other than your mom’s couch.”

These competing perceptions of the properties came to a head Monday morning, when Oakland stopped by the mobile home park to “say sayonara,” and was met by a group of two union organizers and four tenants. Among them was Ben Moore, a 20-year resident of Mountain Meadows Estates.

“(Oakland) gave us a boardroom pitch about how great the parks have been,” Moore said. “But he was giving that pitch to a group of people who have lived in the parks and know that pitch doesn’t reflect reality.”

For Moore, the meeting marked the first time he had come face to face with Oakland. The landlord himself confirmed to the Chronicle his longstanding policy against meeting with residents as a group to discuss their concerns.

“You get a group of people together, it’s just nonproductive,” Oakland said. “I learned that decades ago.”

Still, residents said they didn’t come looking for a confrontation. Most, it seemed, were happy enough to see Oakland go. But his exit created a new uncertainty. As of the Monday meeting, residents were still in the dark about who now owns the land beneath their homes.

“We wanted to just ask him outright since the sale has gone through,” Moore said.

On May 8, the same day the sale finalized, tenants received a letter from Cabrillo, a San Diego-based property management and investment firm, informing them the company was taking over operations. However, a management company is usually a separate entity from the property’s actual owner.

Unless, in this case, they are one and the same.

Benjamin Finegan, executive director of Bozeman Tenants United, said the union has reason to believe that Steven Martini, a co-owner of Cabrillo, is the new owner of record. And in his conversation with the Chronicle, Oakland initiated confirmed that connection himself.

“We’ve done business with Cabrillo in the past and that’s one of the reasons why we selected them as the buyer,” Oakland said. “We had a huge outpouring of people wanting to buy the parks.”

When asked later if he was confirming that Martini was indeed the buyer, Oakland paused before declining to answer that question.

“Those things can be complicated,” Oakland said. “I really don’t know the intimate details between Cabrillo and the investors. I don’t think it’s my business so I don’t think it’s your business.”

Martini did not respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment, leaving the new owner still somewhat in the shadows. But while the face of the company remains obscured, its policy is not.

According to the May 8 letter, the rent increase is here to stay.

Citing the rent strike, the letter states Cabrillo is accommodating a one-time extension, giving residents until May 12 to pay this month’s rent without penalty.

“This is intended to provide additional time to submit your payment and avoid placing your tenancy at risk,” the letter states.

While the letter made other concessions, like promising an assessment of the site and community-wide clean up in the coming weeks and the potential for a rental assistance program in the future, the rent increase makes displacement feel like an inevitability to many residents.

On Saturday, the union convened again to reassess the rent strike. In a unanimous vote, members decided to keep it going.

“We just want the rent hike dropped and to sit down with the new owners and have a say in how this place is run,” Moore said. “Because we’ve had decades of it dictated to us and we’ve seen how terrible things have gone under that system.”

Whether the strike is having its intended financial impact remains a point of contention. Finegan estimates the collective action resulted in a $50,000 loss in rent revenue for May, roughly a quarter of the parks’ average monthly intake.

Oakland, however, dismissed that figure, claiming the company’s collections stayed the same from April to May.

For the residents, however, the stakes are higher than one month and one increase. Both Finegan and Moore expressed concern that the sale to Cabrillo fits into a broader national trend of private equity firms purchasing mobile home parks only to “beautify” them as a justification for aggressive rent hikes.

The residents, Finegan said, are leasing the plots of land month to month. That means prices can rise faster than anyone could be expected to keep up, and it wouldn’t be the first time this trend has played out in Bozeman.

Moore pointed to Timberline Ridge as the cautionary tale. After that park was sold to out-of-state investors in 2021, residents faced steep rent increases and many were forced to leave.

“We as tenants are very worried about the secrecy that has been happening. Because everyone has seen large private equity or private investors and secret landlords come in,” Moore said. “Look at Timberline Ridge. Their rent is up to like $1,400 a month.”

As of Tuesday morning, the standoff has reached another critical junction. May 12 marks Cabrillo’s deadline for tenants to pay their rent without risk to their tenancy.

Whether the new owners move toward the mass evictions Oakland once threatened, or if the residents can force a seat at the bargaining table, remains the unanswered question.

For now, the strike continues.