Ross Perot said that, if you listened closely, you could hear a giant sucking sound across the United States. That was the sound of YOUR jobs going to Mexico. Hell, you didn’t even have to listen hard. It was like the roar of the sun, all around us, everywhere and nowhere. Once you noticed it, you couldn’t not hear it.
It’s good that he was all ears.
Keynes thought that automation would eliminate the need for much work. Seventy years hence, he thought, people might work ten or twelve hours a week. The rest of their time would be taken up with sport, civic duties, and self-improvement.
Attorneys working in big firms in the 1980s thought that word processing and fax machines would reduce their workloads. Instead of handing a document marked up with corrections and proposed revisions, handing it to the typing pool, hanging around to check their work, and handing it to the courier before leaving for the night, edits could be made at the attorney’s desk. How good would that be?
They were all wrong, including the genius. There are still plenty of jobs in the United States. We still work too much and we still define ourselves by our jobs. The availability of PDF attachments, tracked changes, Compare Write and document management systems have increased, rather than decreased, young attorneys’ workloads. If the past is a different country, the future is a different ecosystem. We can no more predict it than we can write a simple formula predicting the relative motion of three bodies, or hit a bank shot off a third ball in pocket billiards.
Now, everyone is frightened that AI will come for our jobs. AI is scarier than Mexicans. AI is going to take the jobs of knowledge workers. Shit is real this time.
Chat GPT – how will artificial intelligence change the business of mobile home park management?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly impact the business of mobile home park management in several ways. Here are a few potential changes:
- Predictive Maintenance: AI can analyze data from various sources, such as sensors and maintenance records, to predict when maintenance issues are likely to occur in mobile home park infrastructure, such as water systems, electrical grids, or common areas. By proactively identifying maintenance needs, park managers can reduce downtime, optimize resources, and improve resident satisfaction.
- Smart Resource Management: AI-powered systems can optimize resource allocation in mobile home parks. For example, AI algorithms can analyze historical data and patterns to predict water and energy consumption, enabling park managers to efficiently allocate resources and minimize waste. This can result in cost savings and environmental benefits.
- Enhanced Security and Safety: AI can be used to improve security and safety measures in mobile home parks. Facial recognition technology and video analytics can enhance surveillance systems, automatically detecting and alerting park managers about potential security threats or unusual activities. AI-powered systems can also identify fire hazards, monitor for safety compliance, and improve emergency response procedures.
- Personalized Resident Services: AI can enable mobile home park managers to provide personalized services to residents. Chatbots or virtual assistants can handle routine resident inquiries and provide immediate responses, freeing up staff time for more complex tasks. AI algorithms can also analyze resident preferences and behaviors to offer tailored amenities, such as suggesting recreational activities or recommending nearby services.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: With the increasing amount of data generated in mobile home parks, AI can help analyze and derive insights from this data to make informed decisions. AI algorithms can analyze data related to occupancy rates, rental prices, resident satisfaction, and maintenance costs to optimize pricing strategies, identify opportunities for revenue growth, and streamline operations.
- Streamlined Administrative Processes: AI can automate various administrative tasks, such as lease management, rent collection, and accounting processes. Natural language processing (NLP) capabilities can assist in reviewing and processing legal documents and contracts, reducing human errors and saving time for park managers.
While AI offers numerous benefits, it’s important to consider potential challenges, such as privacy concerns, ethical considerations, and the need for proper implementation and maintenance. Mobile home park managers should evaluate their specific requirements, adopt AI technologies strategically, and ensure a balance between automation and human interaction to create a positive impact on their business.
When I bought my first park in 2013, water was measured with manual-read meters. Charges and payments were tracked on an Excel spreadsheet. Leases were produced from a Word template. Payments were dropped at a box near the pole barn and taken to the bank by the manager, Dee Dee. Every quarter, either Dee Dee or her ex husband crawled under each home, read the water meter, recorded usage, hand-wrote an invoice and taped the invoice to the applicable resident’s door. Each week or so, she would record charges and payments on the spreadsheet manually and send me the updated draft. If a resident mailed me a check, I would record the payment on the spreadsheet myself and send Dee Dee an updated version. Every few days, she would drive to the bank to deposit payments that had been put in the box. I would set aside the entire month of September to send out five hundred leases, chew crayons, and abuse alcohol.
Three years after I bought that park, I installed remote-read meters from Metron-Farnier. Two years after that, I subscribed to Rent Manager. Three years after that, I upgraded to Rent Manager Silver, which allows for online rent payment, and signed an agreement with Zego. When I sent out leases in September of last year, I told people that, starting in July 2023, rent payments in both parks would have to be made online or through the Rent Manager Cash Payment feature, available at Walmart.
Each one of these technological upgrades lightened the managers’ work-loads. Remote-read meters eliminated the need to crawl under homes to record water usage. Rent Manager automated the posting of recurring charges. Metron and Rent Manager have an API that feeds water meter readings directly into residents’ statements. Electronic payments eliminate the need to collect rents and take checks to the bank. Records kept in the cloud obviate the need to coordinate drafts.
Does this mean that I don’t need a manager anymore? Not at all. What has changed is the scope of the manager’s duties. I used to need them to do banausic crap, like reading manual-read meters and taking checks to the bank. Now, I need them for higher-order tasks. I need them to think, coordinate and follow up when I can’t be in two places at once. The algorithm for common sense and for being present has not been written yet, but those qualities are still necessary.
Here is a picture sent to me earlier this week by the code enforcer in the town where my park in central New York is located. The maintenance guy, Tucker, is building a pad for a new home. The code enforcer dinged the construction because it did not conform with the plan that had been submitted:
The home that had previously been on that lot had sat on a gravel pad next to a cement patio slab. When Tucker built the forms, he did not remove the patio slab; instead, he incorporated it into his pad design. That was what the code enforcer found fault with. For the code enforcer to sign off on the forms, Tucker needed to demo the patio slab.
Current building codes require that manufactured home foundations be insulated from frost. There are two ways to do this. One is to construct the foundation out of piers, or underground cement columns, that extend four feet below grade. The other is to pour a six-inch slab surrounded by a twelve-by-twelve haunch and foam board. If you go with a slab, the perimeter of the home, when installed, can be no less than three inches from the foam board that surrounds the slab, and the home must be skirted with insulated skirting. In either case, the underlying principle is that the concrete that supports the blocks that hold up the home has to be insulated from frost.
If you break up an insulated twelve-by-twelve haunch by building it around an uninsulated four-inch slab, you break the insulation envelope. Even a washed-up tax lawyer like me understands that you can’t do that. I want to like Tucker, so I am trying hard not to say, ‘You can’t fix stupid’.
I forwarded the email from the building inspector to Tucker with a cc to Dee Dee and a note saying, ‘When will this be finished? The pad needs to be ready when the home arrives in late June. The clock is ticking.’ Dee Dee wrote back, saying, ‘Tucker’s phone is not working.’ I ignored the steam coming out of my ears and emailed back,
‘Knock on his door, then.’
‘I will print out this email and hand it to him.’
‘Please follow up and make sure he finishes this on time.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you.’
When I travel to the parks next, I will set aside some time to speak with Dee Dee. I want to make clear that she has more time available than she did when she started managing the park, now that she does not have to crawl under homes, collect and deposit checks, and update invoices manually. I would like her to use that time to do higher-order tasks, like following up with late payers, enforcing the rules, managing Tucker, and making sure that building projects get done right. You need common sense, persistence and attention to detail on-site to manage a well-run park. Until they write a program for that, she has job security.
On a recent trip to Taiwan, I saw a set of concrete forms for a walkway:
I was impressed by the workmanship, as well as the materials. In this country, forms are built by dumbasses who slap two-by-twelves in the ground, leave insulation board unsecured, and incorporate shallow slabs of concrete into the insulation envelope. Reinforcement is done with re-mesh, instead of rebars. In Taiwan, the ground is leveled before the forms are built, the forms are square and secure, and reinforcement is done with two layers of rebar separated by spacers. Maybe that is the source of the giant sucking sound. We can’t make it here because they make it so much better over there.
Very interesting and informative. And I learned a new word “banausic”.