Residents of Dakota Valley Mobile Park on East Helena’s northern edge describe their landlord Malcolm Fan as rude, dismissive, even dangerous – and the reason they were unwilling to share their names with a visiting reporter on a late September afternoon.
One tenant, a mother of two, recalled incidents of harassment and hints of violence. When she started feeling threatened by Fan’s aggressive tone over the phone, she let him know she wanted to record their conversations – and he refused.
Her dogs, a boxer and a terrier, had been included in her lease agreement. Yet Fan accused her – without evidence, according to the woman – of housing “dangerous” animals that bit neighbors. He threatened to evict her if she failed to find them new homes, and when she struggled to do so, he advised her to shoot and kill them.
“He’s a retaliatory type of person,” said the woman, standing outside her mobile home, as her two children call to her intermittently from an open window. “If I had the money [to move], heck yeah, I absolutely would.”
Since Achieve Communities, owned by Fan and his partner Abraham Anderson, bought the property more than four years ago, Dakota Valley residents have struggled with abusive proprietors, rent spikes, septic overflows, brown water, and frequent maintenance failures.
A few miles north of downtown East Helena, with views of the Big Belt Mountains, Dakota Valley sits next to a sleepy subdivision in the southwest Helena Valley. Some 20 mobile homes are laid out around stretches of open asphalt. The units are of similar size but vary in color. Yards and awnings give each home a touch of personality.
It’s generally a pleasant compound, where neighbors know each other’s rhythms. When a retired public servant moved in five years ago, she thought she’d found the place where she’d enjoy her golden years. Then Achieve took over and her rent leapt from $300 on her first lease to $725 today – and residents expect yet another hike in the spring.
They’ve already seen a more than 140% increase in four years, a greater spike than Helena and the rest of Lewis & Clark County, which have seen sharp rent increases. Under Dakota Valley’s previous owners, rent had increased just 35% over a decade, according to two longtime residents.
“It’s so discouraging,” the public servant said. “If I had known this was going to happen when I first moved here, I would’ve…tried to buy a little place.”
Montana has witnessed sharp increases in housing costs since 2020, but few renters anywhere have ridden out a Dakota Valley-sized leap. Given that the average monthly rent across 16 Helena area lot rentals sat at $466 as of last year, according to KTVH, it’s not hard to grasp the struggles of Dakota Valley folk.
One tenant who had taken over the lease from his parents feared his days at Dakota might be unable to keep up with rising rent. The siding on his small house had come off years ago and he’d been unable to save enough to fix it. “I’m almost getting priced out of here,” he said. “I’ve been here since I was 14, that’s 20 years of my life.”
Another tenant said that every month she had to hand over more than half her social security check – her only source of income – to pay rent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines this as severely rent burdened – the last step before homelessness – and she’s likely not alone in the wake of Achieve’s price hikes.
Residents generally understood that rent tends to increase over time, yet wondered what they were paying so much for. “The main thing is the fact that the rent is increasing so much and that there hasn’t been too much improvement on anything,” said a long-term resident.
Achieve reflects an emerging national trend in which investors snap up mobile home parks, one of the last vestiges of affordable housing, then jack up prices and perform minimal maintenance to maximize profits. Touted by some investment groups as a wunderkind, Anderson, who owns some 85 mobile parks across the U.S., has all but admitted this.
He has said rent increases are necessary and that tenants upset by them are the kind of people who get mad at anything. He seems to view other’s homes as an opportunity to line his pockets.
“A lot of people don’t like to talk about this, but obviously, we wouldn’t do this if we weren’t making money as well,” he told the mobile home investment firm Keel Team in 2023. “Otherwise, why would we be doing anything?”
Anderson has taken mobile park homeowners to court in an effort to force the sale of their properties after, he claimed, they had backed out of a deal. Mobile parks in Wisconsin and Indiana have sued him for prolonged maintenance neglect, echoing many of Dakota Valley’s complaints. Golden Estate, a Montana park Anderson owns, has struggled with boil water advisories and water outages, prompting city investigations.
The retired public servant recalled watching the grass in Dakota Valley’s drainage fields grow to four feet, which is against fire code, and as sewage backed up, creating a pervasive stench. Fellow residents reported brown water from their kitchen faucet.
Yet when the former civil servant called Fan to report it, he said she was responsible for the area near her home, which is not entirely true. Dakota Valley rent is meant to include septic, water, and snow removal, but no further amenities like WiFi or garbage disposal.
Residents pay for electricity and gas independently. Tenants are responsible for the upkeep of their homes and yards, but maintenance of the surrounding land, utilities, and common areas is Achieve’s responsibility.
“There was no use talking to those people,” said the former public servant. “They won’t do anything. I just quit calling.”
Almost all of those interviewed said they struggled to get a hold of anyone for assistance with everything from mowing their drain fields to septic and water issues. The Monitor called the park’s maintenance line several times and never received an answer.
The park used to have a resident maintenance man, but he quit and moved out three years ago and had yet to be replaced as of November. Several residents who spoke to the Monitor reported mowing their own drain fields out of fear of the fire risk they present. “If you want something done, it all comes out in your pocket,” said Ken Killhan, a Dakota Valley resident for nearly a quarter-century.
Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell, the state representative for East Helena, filed a complaint in August with the Department of Environmental Quality about water issues at a nearby mobile park owned by Achieve. Mobile home renters often get stuck in situations where they have no recourse, Dunwell told The Monitor, and “just have to put up with abuse.”
Speaking of abuse, the mother of two recounted other threats from Fan. One time he accused her of adding illegal siding to her home. When she proved the addition had been built by a previous owner, he shifted to another bogus reason to threaten eviction. Worried, the resident sought legal advice and was urged to ignore her landlord’s emails.
Eventually, Fan’s threats and eviction notices stopped. She is convinced he finally realized he had no legal grounds to evict her, thanks to a 2023 Montana Supreme Court ruling that mobile home tenants couldn’t be evicted without cause.
But that hasn’t left this East Helena mother feeling any more confident about regularly handing over her hard-earned rent money to people who seem to have little concern for her welfare, or that of her children.
“If somebody’s going to be handling people’s money, their roof over their head, they need to be trustworthy,” she said. “The trust is gone.”