SerpApi.Org
A drive through the Westmoor Mobile Home Park in southwest Oklahoma City paints a picture portraying a quaint community. The grass is cut to a neat level, the trees bloom and the mobile homes are decorated and maintained.
At the park's center is a playground, a pool, a basketball court and a field with two soccer goals adjacent to each other.
Dustin Rollins, a trailer park resident, said that when he was searching for a property, the trailer park's amenities and cleanliness were a reason he and his family moved in.
That is only the surface Rollins would later learn.
The Westmoor Mobile Home Park is Oklahoma City's seventh-highest evictor, according to data from The Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions across Oklahoma City. Several filings from the park are serial evictions.
The serial eviction filings have left tenants stuck in the park, unable to move up the proverbial economic ladder, and the park is pushing tenants into rent-to-own deals that legal experts contend are little more than a profitable scheme that rarely benefits tenants.
Westmoor Mobile Homes
Westmoor is in southwest Oklahoma City, out towards Mustang in ZIP code OK 73169. That ZIP code had 167 evictions filed last year. From that group, 160 were filed by Westmoor. There are an estimated 191 renter-occupied units in that ZIP code, according to the most recent U.S. Census.
The mobile home park filed evictions against 76 households in 2025, with 29 households having more than one filed. One household had 10 evictions filed against them in one year.
Rollins has had seven evictions filed against him in three years living there. Five were filed in 2025, and two were filed this year.
Rollins lives in the park with his wife and three children. He said the eviction cycle started when his food stamps were cut off. He also missed work when his daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
Rollins said he has a job and makes decent money, but when he falls behind and gets evicted, it takes time to get back on his feet.
"At first I thought I would be OK," Rollins said. "It's not like I've actually been evicted. I've paid the late fees. I've never not paid it."
He said he's used his 401(k) to pay rent and late fees when eviction notices come.
"It sucks to have to dig that deep and have my bank account be in overdraft all the time," Rollins said.
Profiting Off Poverty
What Rollins and several other residents have experienced at Westmoor is a serial eviction.
A serial eviction is when a landlord files multiple eviction cases against the same household to collect rent and late fees while the tenant remains in the property.
Rollins said the evictions and late fees have only made it harder for him to pay next month's rent on time. It has also made it more difficult for him to move.
Research conducted by The Eviction Lab found that each eviction filing results in an estimated $180 in fines and fees for typical renter households. This raises their monthly housing cost by 20%, according to the study.
For renters like Rollins, this practice can prevent them from finding new housing.
In Oklahoma, most eviction records remain publicly available indefinitely. Even eviction filings that were dismissed in the tenant's favor, filed mistakenly or were discriminatory are easily retrievable in public court records.
Rollins said when he does look for his next property, he's worried about the uphill battle he'll face.
"It's about finding somebody now that will look past these things (the evictions)," Rollins said. "Look how many times I paid the late fee and the eviction fee."
Amy Coldren, the advocacy and communications director for Mental Health Association Oklahoma, said landlords are less likely to rent to tenants with an eviction on their record.
"Which then means they're likely to spend more in seeking new housing because they're going to have to pay repeated application fees for multiple properties before they find a landlord that's willing to rent to them," Coldren said.
Coldren said the eviction filings are not just financially damaging to a tenant, but they can also harm a tenant's health and educational outcomes.
While the serial eviction process is damaging to the tenant, it also creates a system where landlords can make a profit.
"It (the serial eviction) would be a useful tool if they're trying to manage a tenant out by creating a system that feels untenable for that resident," Coldren said. "And there is also the ability to then add on additional fees, which they could be profiting from."
She added that Oklahoma's Residential Landlord-Tenant Act is what attracts out-of-state landlords like Westmoor's owners to the state.
"If you were an out-of-state entity looking for where to purchase property, then of course it's going to be more appealing to buy property in a state that has laws that fit into that business practice," Coldren said. "If you are looking for properties in a state with a rapid eviction process that costs very little to file an eviction, then it would be appealing if that is a part of your day-to-day operation."
Oklahoma's eviction timeline is among the fastest in the nation, and the filing fee for an eviction can cost a mere $58 in the highest-evicted counties, including Oklahoma County.
YES! Communities & Mobile Home Evictions
Westmoor Mobile Homes is owned by YES! Communities, a Colorado-based real estate company that specializes in affordable, manufactured homes. The company owns parks in 23 states and has 13 properties in Oklahoma.
Rollins said that at Westmoor, fees are tacked on regularly. He said if the grass is too high, the park will cut it and then charge the resident. He also said that the entire park shares a water bill that is divided evenly amongst residents, meaning he can potentially pay more in water than he uses.
The company was flagged before in data research from The Eviction Lab that analyzed evictions in mobile home parks in Florida.
Though an analysis on evictions from YES! Communities was not the focus, Jacob Haas, the author, said the company showed up a decent amount in the data for his research.
Haas, who is now a PhD student at New York University, was a senior research specialist at The Eviction Lab for five years.
"In a few places across the country, mostly places where mobile home parks are prevalent, we were seeing some of these mobile home parks pop up among our top evicting buildings or complexes," Haas said.
This piqued his interest in what is happening at the parks.
"Mobile home parks are kind of the last bastion of affordable home ownership," Haas said.
Haas found that it was significantly easier for a landlord to file an eviction than it was for a banker or lender to start the foreclosure process. Meaning trailer park residents were less protected in their homes than other homeowners.
Haas described it as halfway homeownership, in which the mobile home resident owns the mobile home, but rents the lot underneath.
Research from The Eviction Lab found that when mobile home residents are evicted, they often lose everything they put into the home.
Rollins is on a lease for the home and the lot, though that is changing. He said that Westmoor will not be renewing his lease; instead, they want him to sign a rent-to-own agreement.
Rent-to-Own
At the entrance of the mobile home park, a sign sticks out of the ground.
"Why rent? Own for less!" is written on the sign, with a phone number for potential residents to call.
The sign is promoting the rent-to-own deal.
In rent-to-own deals, tenants are lured by the seemingly easy path to home ownership. However, legal experts have long called foul on rent-to-own properties, and a rent-to-own trailer is an even greater legal gray area.
Eric Hallett, a Tulsa-based attorney with Legal Aid Services Oklahoma, said lawmakers need to rethink how the state approaches trailer park evictions.
Hallett made the argument that anyone purchasing their trailer should not be in landlord-tenant court, though mobile home park residents often find themselves being evicted from the lot.
"It can have mixed ownership, like with the tenant owning or purchasing the unit and then renting the lot," he said. "That makes it really difficult because of the consumer protection problems if we don't have laws that clearly define how those debts should be collected in court and what rights the purchaser has."
Hallett said he generally encouraged avoiding rent-to-own deals, especially a mobile home rent-to-own, adding that a mobile home is not a house; it's a car, according to the law.
The Residents
The serial evictions and push towards rent-to-own by the park have been damaging to the residents of Westmoor.
Rollins said that it's scary and he doesn't know what's going to happen next.
He said he had enough money at the beginning of the year to purchase a new trailer in the park, but after the constant evictions and added fees, he doesn't have it anymore.
