From the archives: Many of the issues outlined in this classic 1973 consumer reports article still confront manufactured home owners today.

Tyranny in mobile-home land
Consumer Reports, JULY 1973

Although relationships between landlords and tenants frequently are not all sweetness and light, at least there usually are written agreements-leases-that spell out the obligations on both sides. But landlord-tenant relationships in mobile home parks can be bitter and dark indeed. There is often no such thing as a lease; the mobile-home owner usually is a "tenant at will." In most states, he and his home can be thrown out at the landlord's whim. In a few states where that whim is supposedly bridled by law, he may still be thrown out for breaking the park's rules-no matter how arbitrary those rules may be.

Such an eviction is not to be taken lightly, for the owner of a typical mobile home is hardly a footloose and fancy free traveler. Increasingly, mobile homes are large, and not really all that mobile. They usually cost several hundred dollars to haul from one spot to another by truck (only the smaller trailers can be pulled by car). The truth is, mobile homes are bought today chiefly because they provide low cost housing. Some 95 per cent of homes sold for less than $15,000 last year came with wheels. But the people who bought them, according to some studies, moved no more often than the population in general.

A person evicted from a mobile-home park is actually in worse shape than someone who loses an apartment. Zoning laws may prevent him from putting his mobile home on his own land, even if he is fortunate enough to own some. Non-landowners must resort to mobile-home parks, and in many parts of the country space in those parks (or "trailer courts," as they used to be known) is extremely scarce. Often, a park entrance fee of several hundred dollars is charged. Add to that the expenses of moving the structure and the risk of damage to the home in transit, and you can see why most mobile home owners would prefer to stay put.

But tenants' natural reluctance to move their dwellings, coupled with landlords' sweeping power to throw tenants out, gives the landlords nearly total control. Trailer tenants often swallow conditions that might move the average apartment dweller to rebellion, such as sudden rent increases, tacked-on fees, arbitrary rules and kickback arrangements.

A case in point

Much to her regret, one mobile-home owner lived through an incident which dramatizes the problems existing today with mobile-home parks. An employee of the Internal Revenue Service, she lives in an apartment in the suburbs of New York. She also owns a mobile home in a rural-area mobile-home park and had been planning to move into it permanently when she retired.

Last October, she was notified of an increase in rent for her trailer pad. The increase, she says, was 10 per cent, a jump that appeared to violate the rent control guidelines then prevailing under Phase 2 of the Nixon administration's inflation-control program. In December, she wrote to the IRS Economic Stabilization Office asking for help. The IRS's reply: "It would appear that the landlord is not complying with the Economic Stabilization Regulations. We have. . . prepared a complaint report regarding the alleged violation."

Phase 2 ended in January, and around the end of March, she got a registered letter from her landlord telling her she had 30 days to take her trailer out of his park. Was it a case of eviction for retaliation? The owner of the trailer park was asked the reasons for the eviction. His answer revealed a lot about the lack of accountability that mobile-home landlords enjoy. "I own the land and I don't want her there," he said. "I don't have to go beyond that."

When she went to the New York State Attorney General’s office for help, she found what many mobile home owners all over the country have found. Most states have little or no protection for the trailer resident against arbitrary eviction. A letter from Robert E. Perin an Assistant Attorney General who handles most of the office's mobile home work, said, "Your landlord may terminate your tenancy upon due notice. . . . This is to advise you regretfully that there is nothing this office can do to help you." Legally, the mobile-home park owner is in the right. He could throw this tenant out because he didn't like the color of her hair if he wanted to. An IRS officer told CU, "The controls are really off on rents. If they were still on, there might be more of a remedy." The woman, at least, has an apartment to fall back on. But many moderate-income trailer dwellers don't.

A climate of fear

The absolute power of park owners in most states to evict residents they regard as troublemakers gives rise to a feeling of apprehension among tenants. A visit to a mobile-home park near the mid-Atlantic shore provided an illustration of that feeling. In many ways, this is an ideal park. Its favorable location provides views of the Atlantic Ocean. Many of its tenants have lived there for years. No entrance or exit fees are charged.

Yet there, as in so many parks, there is tension between owner and tenants, and no channel for resolving it. Some of the tenants have formed a chapter of a state mobile-home owners association. According to one of its officials, the chapter's main gripes are rising rents and the disappearance from the park of amenities that formerly were provided, such as a shower room and a recreation hall. The owner of the park says she can't understand the people in the association. "I don't know why they don't just go if they're so unhappy," she says.

The owner believes that there are about 20 tenants in the association; but the official puts the membership at 54. A visitor counting the number of orange association stickers displayed on trailers would probably conclude that the owner was right. But one association member had a ready explanation for this. "Some of them won't put stickers up," he said, "because they're afraid."

Temptations of monopoly

Holding the power over tenants that they do, landlords of mobile-home parks can be tempted to engage in a variety of abuses. Perhaps most widespread is the practice of piling rent hikes and service fees on top of the rent the tenant had bargained for when he moved into the park. Tenants have been assessed for the planting of trees, charged extra for having guests overnight, and told to pay for the privilege of having pets. They have paid entrance fees to get into parks and exit fees to get out again.

The entrance fees often run $300 or more and, unlike apartment security deposits, are not refundable. But at first blush they might seem unobjectionable. The tenant, after all, is getting a concrete pad to set his trailer on, plus water, sewer and electrical connections and access to whatever amenities the park may provide. For this he should surely pay something.

The hooked question, though, is why should he pay through an entrance fee rather than simply through his rent? And the barb in the hook is that entrance charges give a landlord an incentive to evict tenants in order to collect new fees. Short of outright eviction, the park owner can make life sufficiently unpleasant for his tenants to insure a high turnover. But if all of the park's revenues came simply through rent, the situation would be reversed; the incentive would then be for the landlord to keep his tenants as happy as possible.

Entrance fees aren't the only motivation for a landlord to "churn" his tenant population. A great many park owners are also mobile-home dealers. In New Jersey, for example, a study by Rutgers University found that 61 per cent of mobile-home park tenants had purchased their trailer from the same man who owned their park. Where parks are crowded, the departure of a tenant represents a chance for the park owner to sell a new trailer.

The phenomenon of churning is hard to document, and there are no good figures available on how often it occurs. But occur it does, and not only in New Jersey. An ongoing study begun two years ago by the Minnesota Attorney General’s office has found that "a number of parks were evicting people for apparently no cause," and officials concluded that "economic reasons" were behind the turnover.

The fact that the mobile-home dealer and the mobile home park owner are often the same person also leads to the interesting practice of charging exit fees when a tenant wants to move out and sell his trailer to somebody else. Suppose John Jones, a hypothetical tenant, decides to sell his mobile home. He may line up a buyer, Sam Smith, and agree with Smith on a price. But the mobile-home park owner intervenes. There is a park rule, he says, against selling your trailer and leaving it in the park. An exemption from the rule may be granted if the outgoing tenant, Jones, pays an exit fee. This may be a flat fee (around $250 in some areas) or, more often, a "commission" on the sale of the trailer. The commission usually runs about 10 per cent of the purchase price and is often justified by the park owner on the grounds that it reimburses him for the money he might otherwise have made by selling another trailer. How does the park owner force Jones to pay the fee, considering that Jones is leaving the park? Simple. He lets it be known that if Jones doesn't pay the fee he won't accept Smith as a tenant. That threatens to leave Jones with a trailer on his hands that he doesn't want. So, Jones usually pays up.

Last December, however, a landmark decision was handed down by Judge Francis J. Good of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. Judge Good ruled that resale fees, unless a mobile-home park owner had himself acted as a sales agent, were a violation of the Bay State's Consumer Protection Act and were therefore void. "These payments," the judge wrote, "varied from about $250 to as much as $2,700, with no service at all performed by the respondents therefor." The practice of charging resale fees "is a slick way for the mobile park entrepreneur to get his hands on someone else's money" and "should be struck down completely for what it is: a racket," the judge said. While that decision doesn't affect such matters in other states, law enforcement officials in various parts of the country hope it will be persuasive in their own states.

Living by the rules

The imposition of exit fees is only one example of the profusion of arbitrary rules and regulations faced by many mobile-home dwellers. Here's a sampling of some of the park rules gathered in various parts of the country by the Center for Auto Safety.

"All guests staying overnight must register at the office."

"If you have any complaints or recommendations, please discuss them with management and not your neighbors.”

"Scanty attire not permitted."

"The management reserves the right to evict anyone who persistently and deliberately speaks in a derogatory manner of the park."

"Improper conduct of any kind will not be tolerated."

"The park owners," said Lance Burr, an Assistant Attorney General in Kansas, "exercise a tremendous amount of control. You can be kicked out if you don't mow your lawn, or if you don't have the lid straightened just right on your garbage can. These kinds of rules make ideal pretexts for eviction. I don't know anybody who couldn't be gotten on something."

Thus, written rules that are needlessly restrictive can be used to enforce unwritten rules that are even more insidious. The unwritten rules often include kickback arrangements. Tenants may be obliged to buy trailer skirting, oil, gas or even milk from a particular supplier. The designated supplier may charge inflated prices, and slip back some of his excess profit to the landlord. In Kansas, one park owner called in an outside contractor to "tie down" trailers, making them capable of withstanding strong winds. The procedure is laudable, but the price was ridiculous-$260 per trailer. State officials said it should cost about $40.

CU's research turned up four states that have some kind of mobile-home park tenant protection law and two others that are close to adopting one. None of the laws offer complete protection, but each contains some good points that might be incorporated into a model tenants' rights code. Perhaps the strongest of the lot is Delaware's.

In Delaware, a new tenant must be given a lease, provided he plans to stay in the park at least 120 days. That 120-day period is also the minimum term of the lease, during which no rent increases are allowed. All rents, charges, and grounds for possible eviction must be spelled out in the lease.

The Delaware landlord may not evict a tenant in retaliation for a complaint to a governmental body or for a suit. If a tenant withholds rent to make a landlord honor his lease obligations, the landlord cannot evict him for nonpayment of rent, either. Moreover, the duties of the landlord under Delaware law are set forth in 11 subsections. Those include maintaining adequate drainage patterns, weeding, exterminating insects, providing a shelter against high winds, maintaining electrical and plumbing connections, keeping water and sewage lines in good order, repairing the park roads, and staying out of tenants' trailers unless granted permission by the trailer owner to enter. Park owners are also obliged to give the tenant free choice in the purchase of services such as laundry, milk, and so on. State authorities are now trying to amend that "free choice" provision specifically to include oil and gas suppliers.

The Delaware law is enforced through cease and desist orders issued by the Division of Consumer Affairs. While that law does not appear to incorporate monetary penalties, a state official told CU that he feels the law is having good effects and that compliance has been obtained with little trouble in most cases.

Florida and California resemble each other in their approach to protecting the mobile-home tenant. Both permit eviction only under certain special circumstances. Those include the tenant's violation of state or local ordinances and of park rules. The rules must be shown to the tenant before he moves in and can be changed only with the tenant's consent or with adequate advance notice. That advance notice period is 30 days in Florida and six months in California. Failure to pay rent is grounds for eviction in both states, and in California a tenant can also be evicted for refusal to pay "reasonable service charges." California bans both entrance and exit fees; Florida bans exit fees and requires full disclosure in advance of all other fees.

Neither of the two states provides for a written lease. And both rely on the tenant exclusively to enforce the law by taking his landlord to court. While the threat that the tenant may be awarded damages in court is supposed to deter the landlord from abuses, tenants may be reluctant to sue, and the landlord is more likely than the tenant to be able to afford a court battle. Justice for mobile-home tenants can best be secured with laws that provide for enforcement by state agencies, such as consumer protection offices, as well as by private suits by wronged tenants.

Michigan appears to be stronger in its enforcement than the other states, but it has fewer tenant-protection features to enforce. As yet it has no law prohibiting entrance and exit fees, no provision for a lease, and no law giving tenants a choice of vendors for services. It does, however, have requirements for park owners to maintain habitable surroundings and authority for a tenant to withhold rent if the landlord fails to do that. It also provides protection against arbitrary or retaliatory eviction-that was written into a general landlord-tenant law that has since been amended to apply to mobile-home parks.

To enforce the laws that exist, the Michigan Consumer Protection Division uses common-law powers giving it the authority to seek penalties of up to $10,000 for any one violation. In cases of repeated violations, the division can seek a court order preventing the park owner from doing business. Those powers, according to the division's chief, Ed Bladen, are used "very liberally."

Two states with mobile-home legislation pending are New Jersey and Minnesota, both of which already have laws against retaliatory eviction. The New Jersey bill, which has passed the state legislature but has not been signed by Governor William T. Cahill, is said by our source to be based on Florida's tenant-protection law. The Minnesota legislation would require written leases, 60 days notice for eviction and the elimination of entrance and exit fees. In addition, the Minnesota Attorney General's office is asking for enforcement powers that would include the ability to seek up to $25,000 in civil penalties for violations.

Needed: a model code

To ensure ethical conduct between mobile-home landlords and tenants, a model code, which could be adopted with local modifications by each state, would do well to include at least these seven provisions:

• Every tenant who wants one would get a written lease. Rent and other charges would be fixed for the period of the lease, which would be substantially more than the 120 days of Delaware's current law.

• All entrance and exit fees would be outlawed. As protection against a tenant's breaking the lease, the landlord could require a reasonable-and returnable-security deposit.

• Evictions in retaliation for a tenant's complaining to government authorities or joining a tenants' association would be made illegal and subject to a heavy fine.

• Park rules would have to be completely disclosed to every tenant before he moves in. Landlords would be required to engage in a reasonable amount of consultation with tenant representatives before changing the rules. If a change is made over tenant protests, a substantial waiting period should precede the effective date of the new rules, as in California.

• Tenants would be assured freedom to choose their own vendors for skirting, awnings, oil, milk, laundry, tie-downs, and other goods and services. The attempt to impose a vendor on tenants would render a landlord liable to a civil or criminal penalty.

• A minimum list of landlord responsibilities would be spelled out in state law, as is the case in Delaware.

• All of the above provisions would be enforced by the state's attorney general's office or consumer protection agency. The enforcing agency would be given enough teeth to make park owners hesitate before violating any provisions of the code. Of course, tenants should also have a right to sue privately.