JONESBORO, Ga. -- Susana Galindo was tired of the booming music, the beer-soaked parties and the leering neighbors who used to watch her when she left her trailer-type home for her job at a produce store. The young, single woman from Mexico wanted out.

One day, she saw a brightly colored sign on the side of a road in suburban Atlanta advertising a different kind of complex in a nicer neighborhood. The sign was in Spanish, which was handy as Ms. Galindo speaks limited English. Almost immediately, she became hooked on a two-bedroom unit. "It's clean," she says through an interpreter. "There're no more people hanging out, drinking."

Ms. Galindo's new neighborhood is run by Affordable Residential Communities, a Denver-based owner of 315 so-called manufactured-home communities around the country. The publicly traded real estate investment trust, or REIT, both sells and rents manufactured houses. Scott Jackson, the company's founder and chief executive officer, wants to boost occupancy and profit margins by turning run-down "trailers parks" into more family-oriented communities. To that end, the company is evicting unruly and delinquent tenants, replacing underperforming managers, building soccer fields, and fixing pools and playgrounds.

In theory, the business promises large profits because it enjoys a steady rental stream. The properties also typically require less maintenance than a multifamily apartment building. But the company has stumbled lately, sending its share price sliding.

To fill its parks in some markets, the company is aggressively marketing to Hispanics, a group that Mr. Jackson says make ideal candidates for manufactured housing. Company research, he says, shows that Hispanics tend to have reliable payment habits, are interested in maintaining nice communities and "tend to do business by word of mouth," thus pulling other family members and friends into the parks.

Since he bought his first two parks in Cheyenne, Wyo., from his parents in 1988, Mr. Jackson, a former vice president at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., says he's been fighting stereotypes and skepticism about manufactured homes. Over the years, he bought more properties, many of them in disrepair. The key to turning them around is to instill a sense of ownership and belonging among the occupants, he says.

But some affordable-housing advocates say that living in a manufactured-home park isn't ideal for poor and low-income people. Residents don't own the land underneath the house, and yet unlike an old-style trailer, it can't easily be moved to a new location. "They have very limited prospects for building wealth if they don't control the land, and they can easily be displaced," says George McCarthy of the Ford Foundation, which is working to improve the financial situation of manufactured-home owners.

Residents are also vulnerable to the often-high interest rates on loans they take out to buy the houses. As an alternative, some advocates are encouraging manufactured-home residents to buy parks themselves and establish cooperatives. In New Hampshire, 15 percent of the parks are owned by such cooperatives, according to the Ford Foundation.

Under Affordable Residential Communities' "lease to purchase" program, a resident puts down $999 and then pays $100 every month on top of the rent, until the house is paid off. The company says it usually takes four to six years before the resident owns the structure, which typically costs between $10,000 and $30,000, depending on the condition. The company also finances house purchases and charges interest rates of 10 percent to 12.9 percent, which it says are relatively low given the high-risk profile of its customers.

Company officials defend their business as providing affordable housing where it is most needed, and note that occupancy rates are rising at their parks. "We have customers who feel very good about what we are doing," Mr. Jackson says.

When Heather Harter moved to Acworth, Ga., to run one of the company's communities there, the local police dispatcher warned her not to take the job. Cars at the park were perched on concrete blocks and sheets served as makeshift curtains in some of the homes' windows. Ms. Harter says that when a maintenance worker plunged the sink in the management office she found marijuana.

The company says deteriorated conditions were common at many of the parks it bought last year. And it says local managers like Ms. Harter are vital in turning the properties around.

At Acworth, Ms. Harter started going through the books. She obtained a list of local churches that could help residents who were strapped for rent, and served notice of pending eviction to those unwilling to follow rules about speeding, loud music and other behavior. "I have Donald Trump's attitude," she said. "I hate to say it, but business is business." Ms. Harter also opened the park's "club house" to a Bible study now attended by 300 children.

Charity Edmonds, who helps run the Bible group, used to live next to a "party house" at the park before the new management cracked down. "I was like, 'Praise the Lord, somebody is going to do something,'" says Ms. Edmonds. She and her husband, a minister, considered moving, but have decided to stay in their double-wide home.

Affordable Residential Communities isn't the first company to nationalize the business of running manufactured-home parks and try to drive up profits. Equity Lifestyle Properties, a REIT that focuses mostly on manufactured-home parks for retirement-age residents, is doing quite well. Analysts say Equity's older resident base tends to be more stable and credit-worthy.

Affordable Residential Communities, though, has had a rough start, but insists things are turning around. Mr. Jackson says it is taking more time than expected to fix the 132 distressed communities it acquired shortly after going public in February 2004. Occupancy fell temporarily as the company cleaned out undesirable and delinquent tenants. It also has been hurt by the collapse of the financing industry for manufactured homes in the 1990s. Further complicating its effort to repopulate the parks are low interest rates for traditional houses, which have pulled away potential customers. As a result, the company has had to offer incentives and discounts to lure people into its parks.

But the company's overall strategy, according to many on Wall Street, is not producing the results it promised. In the second quarter, its expenses grew, while net operating income -- a key measure of a property group's profitability -- fell compared with the year-earlier quarter. Since it went public 19 months ago, its stock has tumbled about 36 percent.

"It's been much less economically sound than was initially implied at the time of the IPO," said Craig Leupold, an analyst at Green Street Advisors, a research firm in Newport Beach, Calif.

In Georgia, meanwhile, Ms. Galindo is just happy to have a found a home where she feels safe. Her immaculately clean living room contains furniture in a mix of styles. Four candleholders with images of the Virgin Mary on them flicker on the stove.

She's "leasing to purchase" the house from Affordable Residential Communities. She pays $525 a month -- about half her monthly income from the food market where she works. Affordable Residential Communities paid her $1,000 because she referred five people to the park in the past five months.

"If you do well for your customer, you are going to do well for your shareholder," said Mr. Jackson.