Enforcement gaps make legal aid the only recourse for exploited mobile home park residents
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During my first two years as a legal aid attorney, I worked exclusively on eviction defense cases in Ohio's Appalachian counties. While I saw tenants of all backgrounds face a broad range of housing challenges, I became increasingly aware of the regulatory no-man's-land that leaves tenants of mobile home parks with little recourse in the face of hazardous living conditions and egregious violations of state law. I also became aware that legal aid - free civil legal services available to income-eligible clients - was the only mechanism through which mobile home park residents could seek accountability.
Increased state funding of Legal Aid would help mobile home park residents of Ohio's Appalachian counties advocate for safe living conditions and create an environment in which park owners know they must meet basic standards or be held accountable.
What makes mobile home parks the perfect storm for housing exploitation? In my experience there are three interrelated factors: tenant populations vulnerable to exploitation, park owners insulated by invisibility, and a near-complete absence of regulation or enforcement.
Most residents in mobile home parks have low, fixed incomes with few other options for housing. Many residents are seniors or people with disabilities who are less likely to have the resources to research their rights and/or self-advocate. With no housing alternatives, even residents who are aware of their rights endure untenable living conditions rather than raise concerns and risk retaliation.
For those residents who do wish to raise a concern about unsafe housing conditions or unlawful park rules and practices, there is the problem of identifying who owns the park. Park residents rarely know who the park operator is beyond the local manager, often another resident, who collects monthly rent. Extremely difficult to track down even for an attorney, park owners hide behind LLCs with little-to-no local contact information that typically turn out to be the entity of another business, many of which are institutional investors. A quarter of Ohio's mobile home parks have out-of-state owners. I have spent months tracking the ownership trail of mobile home parks, one time finding a hedge fund to be the owner.
Unfortunately, finding the owner - when possible - is not the end of the game. Many owners are non-responsive to park residents or their attorneys.
How do landlords get away with ignoring tenant concerns? That's where the lack of regulation and enforcement comes into play. While Ohio's cities and towns have housing code and enforcement offices through which a tenant can file a complaint against a negligent landlord, all but one of the mobile home parks I have worked with have been located outside of municipality limits, beyond the reach of those services. Counties rarely have housing code and even less frequently have a code enforcement mechanism. Although some County Health Departments will address situations like open sewage or contaminated water, most do not have the resources to regulate other conditions issues in a park, like damaged roads, sale or rental of poorly maintained or uninhabitable mobile homes, utility lapses, and more.
The only regulatory oversite of mobile home parks with no local code comes from the Ohio Department of Commerce whose scope is limited to inspecting the installation of mobile units and does not include the authority to hold park operators accountable if they violate rental agreements with park residents or fail to maintain the park.
With no regulatory body to require park owners to address unsafe living conditions or abide by state law governing lot leases and park rules and fees, the only recourse tenants have is to file a civil court case against the landlord. And the only way to do that is with an attorney, usually from Legal Aid.
A mobile home park is like a mini city with roads, sidewalks, and utility systems to maintain. But unlike cities and towns whose mandate is to serve the residents, a park owner's goal is generally to increase profits, even if at the expense of safety. Impassable sidewalks, lengthy utility lapses, exposed gas lines, and failure to remove garbage are problematic anywhere, but particularly dangerous where there is a large elderly and disabled population.
State law requires landlords to offer a new annual lease to park tenants who own their mobile home and rent a lot before the expiration of their last lease. But park owners rarely offer a new lease, and residents rarely know they are entitled to one. Without a lease to protect them from egregious changes in rent or park rules and fees, residents who own their mobile home are particularly susceptible to exploitation because moving a mobile home is expensive and sometimes impossible. If a resident has no lease and cannot keep up with rent increases, they may be evicted. And if they are unable to move or sell their mobile home, the park can initiate legal action to take possession of the unit.
One tactic to leverage remedying action from park owners has been to petition the court to allow tenants to escrow their rent. When a critical number of tenants begin paying their
monthly rent to the court, where it is unavailable to the park owner until they address grievances, the grievances start to get addressed.
If we can effectively interrupt the business model of neglect across the Appalachian region, it will become in park owners' best interests to proactively maintain their properties and be responsive to tenant concerns.
Laws alone do not protect tenants if there is no mechanism for enforcement. Nor do they protect tenants if they have no representation in the courts.
Increased state funding for legal aid will not only help current mobile home park residents address unsafe living conditions, it will help set a precedent that incentivizes park owners to do better.