Court Opinion

ID: 9767149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:11:22.98182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:28.966111
License: Public Domain

BROSKY, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the majority that our decision in Childs Instant Homes, Inc. v. Miller, 416 Pa.Super. 602, 611 A.2d 1208 (1992), distinguished actions for evictions and actions for ejectment. Thus, on the basis of that precedent our decision is supportable and a logical extension of that decision and, for that reason, I concur with the majority’s decision. However, I am not entirely certain that our legislature had such a distinction in mind when drafting the act in question. Appellees, in their brief, quote Representative Manderino in legislative session as follows:
The entire purpose of not allowing eviction at the expiration of any lease period is based on the fact that residents of these parks don’t have much facility in moving that mobile home, which may be their life investment, to another mobile home park. In many communities, zoning ordinances prohibit the moving of that mobile home to an individual lot. This is the guts of the bill.
*424From Pa. Legislative Journal, House, 2078 et seq. July 15, 1979. Further, the Mobile Home Park Rights Act, 68 Pa.C.S.A. § 398.1, requires the following notice to be provided all lessees of mobile home parks:
The rules set forth below govern the terms of your lease or occupancy agreement with this mobile home park. The law requires all of these rules to be fair and reasonable.
You may continue to stay in this park as long as you pay your rent and other reasonable fees, service charges and assessments hereinafter set forth and abide by the rules of the park....
68 Pa.C.S.A. § 398.4. The act then lists all the reasons upon which a tenant can be evicted and sets forth guidelines for such an eviction. Two of the reasons stated for allowing evictions is if there is a change in use of the park land or parts thereof or if the park is terminated.
The quote from Representative Manderino coupled with the provisions of the Act, which allows a tenant to stay in a park as long as they pay the rent and abide by the rules, in my opinion, supports a strong argument that the legislature meant to allow a tenant to stay in a mobile home park indefinitely as long as the tenant paid the rent and assessments and abided by the rules and as long as the park was in the business of being a mobile home park.1 If this indeed was their intent, I trust that in the wake of our decision today they will take appropriate steps to amend the act to clearly enunciate that intent.

. Read in this fashion the act would represent a careful balancing of the interests of the two relevant parties. By providing grounds for evicting a tenant which include violation of rules, nonpayment of rent and the ending of the park’s existence as a mobile home park the interests of the owner(s) of a mobile home park are protected. They will not be forced to live with a troublemaking or nonpaying tenant nor can they be forced to stay in business simply because there are tenants who need a place to live. On the other hand, a tenant would be assured a place to live and be protected from capricious expulsion from the park as long as he or she lived by the rules and payed the rent and would not be exposed with the problem addressed by Representative Manderino above.