North Liberty mobile home park residents had their fight for affordable housing showcased at FilmScene on Wednesday and Thursday in front of a nearly sold-out crowd consisting of political figures, mobile home residents, and attendees eager to learn about city class issues.

Directed by Sara Terry, *A Decent Home* tells the story of wealthy landowners raising prices on mobile homeowners’ land, forcing those owners to either fight for their home or find a new one.

“I learned that a mobile home is not a mobile home,” said Luz Galicia, who formerly lived in the Denver Meadows mobile home park in Aurora, Colorado. “If we stick together…if we organize, we win.”

Galicia, who appeared in Terry’s film and spoke during a Q&A session after the screening, lived in a mobile home in order to have enough money to pay for her two daughters to attend college. Galicia was forced out of her home after Aurora City Council members voted to rezone Denver Meadows for redevelopment.

Galicia’s story represents a much larger issue nationwide. Companies buy up mobile home parks, increase rent, and eventually kick out residents to begin new developments.

As filmmaker Sara Terry explains in the film, issues of wealth disparities are happening all over the world, including in North Liberty.

In 2019, Golfview mobile home park resident Candi Evans noticed a sign on her door at her North Liberty home that said her rent would increase by 61 to 63 percent. It was then that she knew someone had to step up and fight against the increase.

“I had retired in January that year, thought I was set and would live a comfortable life,” Evans said during the Q&A. “By March, Havenpark changed my plans.”

Havenpark, an investment firm based in Utah, has been buying up parks in Iowa. In February a report from the Cedar Rapids Gazette said the firm had bought two mobile home parks in Iowa City for $33.5 million.

Under Iowa law, Havenpark can increase rent in the parks without any notice. Iowa Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, D-Iowa, has spearheaded conversation encouraging legislation that would require rent increases to be announced at least 90 days ahead of time.

Wahls said mobile home legislation has been difficult to pass under current Republican leadership.

“They will effectively block any legislation from moving forward in the future, as long as, bluntly, Republicans control the Iowa legislature and so we’re not going to give up and we plan to keep working on the issue,” Wahls said during the Q&A.

Jessica Lopez, 38, who attended the screening at FilmScene, wasn’t aware that some of the same landowners own multiple mobile home parks in Iowa City. Lopez lived in a mobile home but moved out before rent started to increase.

“I might not be where I am now because I wouldn’t have been able to save up as much because of the increases in the rent if it would have happened any sooner,” Lopez said.

The Iowa City City Council has recently been working to deal with mobile housing issues this year. In April, the City Council approved funding for relocations for residents in the Forest View mobile home park on the north side of town.

Filmmaker Sara Terry complimented the City Council for work relating to the park.

“You had a city council change the way business was done,” Terry said. “Yeah, you want to do a development? You’re going to do this.”

Terry is able to bring these issues to light in *A Decent Home.* The wealth gap has been a large concern to Terry for over a decade, which helped to inspire the documentary.

“I think everything flows from that gross inequity in our world,” Terry said during the post-screening Q&A. “Greed is the face of climate change. It’s the face of systemic injustice. It’s the face of economic inequity.”

Currently, the film remains in the film festival circuit, but Terry hopes to spread awareness by starting impact campaigns in Iowa and Colorado over the summer as well as signing with a distributor to start looking for streaming deals.

“If we just take it away from politics, this is about home,” Terry said. “This is about our community. It’s about our neighbors. It’s about who we want to be as Americans. It’s really simple.”