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On July 26, residents of Valley View Estates mobile park in Archbald, PA, got news that would change everything: The owner of their community had entered into a binding sales agreement the prior month, and by April 2026, the land under their homes would have new ownership.
The new owners are linked to Project Gravity, a planned data center development that will span at least six buildings and 1.62 million square feet across the campus.
For the three dozen families who call Valley View home, the news raised more questions than answers. Would they be forced out? What relocation help, if any, would they receive? And where, in a region with rising rents and limited affordable housing, would they go?
“A lot of people don’t have the knowledge to fight this type of fight,” Candice May, a resident of the community, told The Times-Tribune. “These people have more money, more power.”
Their fight sits at the crossroads of a data center gold rush, a growing shortage of affordable homes, and tenant protections ill-equipped to deal with the confluence of crises. As state leaders work to fast-track billion-dollar tech projects, the families in Archbald are discovering what it means to live on land suddenly worth far more to someone else.
Pennsylvania’s big bet on data
Just weeks before residents of Valley View Estates learned their community would be sold, Pennsylvania leaders were celebrating a record-setting economic milestone. President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick announced $90 billion in private-sector investments aimed at turning the Keystone State into a hub for artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.
At the summit, McCormick pitched Pennsylvania as singularly positioned to lead this new era.
“As the nation’s second-largest energy producer and a global nuclear power leader, Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to deliver the abundant, affordable energy that growing AI and advanced manufacturing sectors demand,” said the Republican lawmaker. “We have the skilled workforce to build and operate this critical infrastructure, world-class universities driving innovation, and strategic proximity to over half the country’s population.”
It’s exactly those factors—cheap energy, abundant water, and a highly educated workforce—that are drawing data centers like Project Gravity to places like Lackawanna County. State leaders see the trend as a chance to reestablish Pennsylvania’s industrial dominance after decades of decline in steel and manufacturing, and they’re jumping at the opportunity.
Just a month before Trump and McCormick’s announcement, Gov. Josh Shapiro unveiled a $20 billion commitment from Amazon to build AI infrastructure in Pennsylvania. For Shapiro, the promise of jobs has been central.
“This initial investment from Amazon will create thousands of good-paying, stable jobs as Pennsylvania workers build, maintain, and operate the first two data center campuses,” he said in June. “With this historic announcement, we’re creating opportunity for our workers, generating new revenue for our local communities, and ensuring the future of AI runs right through Pennsylvania.”
What data centers need: Power, people, water, land
Beyond capital, the building blocks of data centers are more basic: power, people, water, and land. Pennsylvania checks nearly every box, but one significant roadblock to scaled development has been Pennsylvania’s zoning laws. The state lacks a robust approval infrastructure to fast-track these projects.
It’s a problem that extends to the residential construction sector, too. In a recent Realtor.com® report card for new construction, the Keystone State scored a C, accounting for just 1.6% of new-construction permits in the U.S. despite being home to 3.8% of the population. While still relatively affordable compared to the rest of the country, Pennsylvania’s run-up in home prices and rents has been attributed to its lack of development (in large part because of zoning restrictions) in a recent paper from Pew Research.
Shapiro is expected to announce a robust housing plan sometime in September, and the state’s pro-housing caucus recently announced plans to tackle residential zoning issues, but data center development is getting a head start with two proposed bills that would streamline approvals and expand tax incentives.
Herein lies the problem facing families like those in Valley View Estates. Even though they will be given some relocation assistance if they’re forced to move, their options are limited in a state that has underdeveloped residential housing and is throwing its full might behind data center investment.
‘Classic exploitation’
May and her partner, Matthew Bucksbee, live in Valley View Estates with their 2-year-old daughter, Nova. May said she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure she and her family are OK come April 2026, when the park officially changes ownership.
“I’m going to make sure, no matter what, that my family is taken care of and everything, but I can’t say the same thing for everybody else,” she recently told the Times-Tribune. She was speaking of the nearly three dozen residents, many of whom have limited means.
“Everybody in this trailer park is on a fixed income. Some are handicapped. My daughter has special needs, and there’s little kids in the trailer park,” Tina Goble, another resident, told the Times-Tribune.
Other residents are waiting for their children to finish school in the local district, or worry about the 30 or so stray cats that the community takes care of.
While a 1976 law, the Pennsylvania Manufactured Home Community Rights Act, established key provisions to protect residents of mobile parks, Valley View residents worry that they are fighting a losing battle.
While they’re guaranteed some level of relocation assistance by state law, they’re concerned that there will be no sustainable alternative to the rent they were paying at the park. Indeed, housing costs have risen faster in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where the park is located, than even in New York City or its suburbs, the Pew paper found.
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan told the Times-Tribune it was “classic exploitation.”
“Big business rolls in and displaces people who need this housing, and where else are they going to go?” he said.
The affordable land rush
Pennsylvania isn’t alone. In Virginia’s “Data Center Alley,” residents have organized against a proposal that would bring high-voltage transmission lines into their backyards. And across the country, there’s been a surge in interest from developers in mobile parks—not just for data centers, but because they’re largely seen as low-cost, steady-return, recession-proof investments.
For the 21 million Americans who live in manufactured housing, that has meant rising rents, fewer protections, and, in many cases, the loss of the last affordable path to homeownership. That imbalance is at the heart of what’s happening at Valley View Estates.
“I didn’t know that poor people were the ones that you just wipe off the face of the earth,” May told the Times-Tribune.
What’s unfolding in Archbald is bigger than one community. It’s a warning that as states race to attract data centers and investors chase profits in mobile home parks, the people most dependent on manufactured housing may be the ones most easily pushed aside.