04/18/2026
RED ALERT: MASS RENT HIKE
On March 26 tenants at King Arthur and Mountain Meadows mobile home parks got notice that their landlord Gary Oakland is instituting 11% rent hikes across both parks in May.
Tenants like Linda and Ruth live on fixed incomes and already spend most of their social security checks on rent. Richard cancelled his Life Alert, the service he needs to call for support in case of emergency. Other tenants are cancelling car insurance, cutting back on groceries, and holding off on filling prescriptions. Carol lost her last place because of a rent hike, which forced her to move to King Arthur. She doesn’t know where she would go if this hike prices her out of the park.
These rent hikes are just the latest example of Gary Oakland’s greed. He has neglected these properties and abused the tenants for decades. Last year the tenants organized, unionizing over 58% of the 338 lots. Soon after, they won over $500,000 in long-delayed infrastructure repairs.
Now Oakland is cashing out, selling the parks to a California landlord, and this rent hike is a last-ditch attempt to recoup his losses and pass the costs along to his tenants.
King Arthur and Mountain Meadows parks, off Huffine in Gallatin County and built in the 1970s, have been home to hundreds of families. They are some of the last semi-affordable housing around Bozeman, one of the last places that poor and working class families can afford. Where are these families supposed to go when hit with this hike? And when the new owner comes in and demands even more?
These trailer parks are the center of Bozeman’s struggle against investor greed, and for the people who make Bozeman home for all of us.
The tenants won’t back down. Stay tuned.
