Opinion ID: 2585381
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mobile and Manufactured Homes

Text: At the outset, this facial challenge to the Mobile Home Parks Resident Ownership Act, chapter 59.23 RCW (the Act), relates to legislation enacted pursuant to the police power of the State of Washington. The majority has appropriately described how the Act operates and the facial constitutional challenge the petitioners have made to the statutory enactment. But, in conjunction with its flawed interpretation, the majority neglects to discuss the practical reality of mobile home life. Mobile homes are not mobile. The term is a vestige of earlier times when mobile homes were more like today's recreational vehicles. Today mobile homes are designed to be placed permanently on a pad and maintained there for life. Roger Colton & Michael Sheehan, The Problem of Mass Evictions in Mobile Home Parks Subject to Conversion, 8-SPRING, J. AFFORDABLE HOUSING & COMMUNITY DEV. L. 231, 232 (1999). Once `planted' and `plugged in,' they are not easily relocated. Miller v. Valley Forge Vill., 43 N.Y.2d 626, 403 N.Y.S.2d 207, 374 N.E.2d 118, 120 (1978). Moreover, In most instances a mobile home owner in a park is required to remove the wheels and anchor the home to the ground in order to facilitate connections with electricity, water and sewerage. Thus it is only at substantial expense that a mobile home can be removed from a park with no ready place to go. Malvern Courts, Inc. v. Stephens, 275 Pa.Super. 518, 419 A.2d 21, 23 (1980). Physically moving a double- or triple-wide mobile home involves unsealing; unroofing the roofed-over seams; mechanically separating the sections; disconnecting plumbing and other utilities; removing carports, porches, and similar fixtures; and lifting the home off its foundation or supports. Colton & Sheehan, supra, 232. Costs of relocation, assuming relocation is even possible for older units, can range as high as $10,000. Id. It is the immobility of mobile homes that accounts for most of the problems and abuses endured by mobile home tenants. Luther Zeigler, Statutory Protections for Mobile Home Park TenantsThe New York Model, 14 REAL ESTATE L.J. 77, 78 (1985). The effects on mobile home owners (home owners) faced with moving because mobile home park owners (park owners) want to convert a mobile home park to another use can be devastating. A home owner owns the mobile home, but only rents the land on which it sits. Closure and conversion of a mobile home park force the owner either to move, or to abandon what may be his most valuable equity investment, a mobile home, to the developer's bulldozer. Displacement from a mobile home park can mean economic ruin for a mobile home owner. Karl Manheim, Tenant Eviction Protection and the Takings Clause, 1989 WIS. L. REV. 925, 956 n.179 (1989). See Granat v. Keasler, 99 Wash.2d 564, 663 P.2d 830 (discussing similar problems for owners of houseboats renting moorage), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1018, 104 S.Ct. 549, 78 L.Ed.2d 723 (1983). Availability of affordable housing is one of the goals of the Growth Management Act. RCW 36.70A.020(4). Mobile homes present affordable housing options for large segments of society. The President's Commission on Housing declared: [M]anufactured housing is a significant source of affordable housing for American families, particularly first-time homebuyers, the elderly, and low- and moderate-income families.... Almost all local and state regulations, however, discriminate against manufactured housing. These discriminatory policies cause communities to ignore and forgo a promising opportunity to narrow the gap between supply and demand for affordable housing. Molly A. Sellman, Equal Treatment of Housing: A Proposed Model State Code for Manufactured Housing, 20 URB. L. 73, 74 n.3 (1988) (quoting THE REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON HOUSING 56, 85 (1982)). The human dimension to mobile home ownership is considerable. Mobile home residents are typically poorer than the average rental household, with incomes lower by one-third. Many home owners are elderly residents with friends, contacts, and community that have centered on the park for years, if not decades. Colton & Sheehan, supra, at 233. The costs to the community in terms of providing public housing for evicted mobile home owners who are low-income families or the elderly, for example, are enormous. Exacerbating the problem is the scarcity of mobile home parks: Some towns exclude mobile homes altogether; others limit how long the homes can stay in town. Most frequently, municipalities confine mobile homes to privately-owned mobile home parks and restrict the number of parks permitted in the town. Consequently, there is a major shortage of space for mobile homes. Thus the owner who needs to rent a lot for his mobile home has no choice but to enter the park owner's market in which the demand for space far exceeds the supply of available lots. Thomas G. Moukawsher, Mobile Home Parks and Connecticut's Regulatory Scheme: A Takings Analysis, 17 CONN. L. REV. 811, 814-15 (1985) (footnotes omitted). See Jay M. Zitter, Annotation, Validity of Zoning or Building Regulations Restricting Mobile Homes or Trailers to Established Mobile Home or Trailer Parks, 17 A.L.R.4th 106 (1982). Not surprisingly, abuses abound in this seller's market: Park owners have been criticized for charging exorbitant entrance fees and for claiming from their tenants miscellaneous, and often arbitrary, charges, in addition to fees for extra cars, children, pets, or guests. Most important, the combination of short leases, entrance fees, and prohibitions of on-the-lot sales have allowed some park owners to make substantial profits by evicting home owners and their homes. Because of the space shortage, many evicted mobile home owners have lost their investments. Park owners have not allowed the homes to be sold on their land, and there are few, if any, other places to put them. Consequently, the evicted homes are worth much less when offered for sale. Moukawsher, supra, at 815 (footnotes omitted). The Maryland Court of Appeals in 1980 detailed abuses afflicting mobile home tenants: Despite the rising popularity of relatively low cost mobile homes, many communities have enacted zoning regulations which exclude them entirely or severely limit the areas where they may be placed, frequently restricting them to mobile home parks. Thus, the mobile home owner is compelled to rent space from the park owners who, because of the limited availability of space and the high cost of relocation, are able to dictate unfavorable rental terms and conditions. As a result, mobile home owners often have been forced to buy mobile homes from the park owner in order to obtain a site, to pay excessive entrance fees, to buy specified commodities from specified dealers, to pay the park owner a commission on the sale of the mobile home, or, upon sale, to remove and pay an exit fee. Cider Barrel Mobile Home Court v. Eader, 287 Md. 571, 414 A.2d 1246, 1248 (1980). Manifestly, home owners have markedly less bargaining powerin fact, they have none, as upon eviction they become homeless and may lose what is likely their most valuable asset, their homesthan do park owners. As a consequence, home owners are not in a position individually to bargain at arm's length with their landlords, the park owners.