King Arthur / Mountain Meadows Rent Strike Fund

Tenants across King Arthur and Mountain Meadows Parks voted to authorize a rent strike to launch on May 1.

We need you to have our backs. Donate to our strike fund, which will be used to support striking tenants with legal support and any other support they will need.

This vote follows a week-long organizing drive after tenants received notification of 11% rent hikes across the parks.

King Arthur and Mountain Meadows Parks are home to over 30% of Bozeman’s mobile home residents. The unions represent over 60% of the parks’ 338 units. On March 26, residents across the parks received notice of the rent hike, a cash grab by landlord Gary Oakland before he sells the parks to an out-of-town investor, which is set to finalize next month.

The tenants at the parks cannot afford the rent hike. Tenants like Linda and Ruth live on fixed incomes and already spend most of their social security checks on rent. Richard canceled his Life Alert, the service he uses to call for support in an emergency. Other tenants are canceling car insurance, cutting back on groceries, and holding off on filling prescriptions.

We are fighting to keep some of the last affordable housing in Gallatin County affordable.

RENT STRIKES

This is the first Montana rent strike in nearly 50 years.

A rent strike is an organized, collective action wherein tenants withhold their rent payments as a tactic to escalate on the landlord in order to win a set of demands. Strikes are high-stakes actions that come at the end of a long arc of engagement.

Strike authorization has involved an intensive drive, including weekly meetings, door-knocking, and signing strike commitment cards. Last night, the unions met together to assess their numbers and deliberate on the strike. Ultimately, they voted to move forward with authorization.

As with labor strikes, authorization does not necessarily mean that the strikes will launch on May 1. Following the authorization vote last night, the unions notified Gary Oakland of the strike authorization and gave him a deadline of the close of business on April 30 to reach an agreement with the union. If he fails to do so, the tenants are ready to withhold rent starting Friday, May 1.

This strike would be the first in Montana since a 1978 strike at Covered Wagon Trailer Park Court, another trailer park in the Bozeman area, which resulted in the first collectively bargained lease in Montana history.

PARKS BACKGROUND

Over the last seven years, 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. When they tried to request repairs, tenants were often met with eviction threats and harassment from the property manager.

In July 2025, tenants saw that both parks were up for sale. In a matter of days, tenants formed tenant unions, becoming chapters of the citywide tenant union, Bozeman Tenants United. The unions collaborated with NeighborWorks, a nonprofit developer, to bid on purchasing the properties and becoming a Resident-Owned Community. Even after their bid was declined, tenants continued organizing for critical improvements. In the last year, the tenants have won over $500,000 in overdue repairs from Oakland.

Oakland’s plans to sell the parks make him part of a national trend; mobile home parks have been a site of vulture capitalism by a particularly exploitative set of national investors. Recent sales of mobile home parks across Montana have resulted in devastating rent increases, like those at a mobile home park in Helena , where a new Washington-based owner increased annual rent and fees by $1,320. In Missoula, mobile home park residents have fought 50% rent increases since their properties were sold to Texas investors in 2023.