Legislature works on trailer park laws

In the coming week, House lawmakers are expected to debate and vote on the second of two bills that would add protections for homeowners in mobile home parks across Colorado.

The first, House Bill 1201 allows mobile homeowners 90 days to purchase a mobile home park if it goes up for sale. The park owner is not required to accept the offer, according to co-sponsor Representative Edie Hooton, D-Boulder. The 90-day period would allow mobile homeowners time to put together an offer, with financing, she told the House on March 3. 

The bill passed on a 41-24 vote, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans, including Rep. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, voting against.

Under the bill, a majority of the mobile homeowners would have to agree to make the offer. 

Rep. Richard Holtorf, R-Akron, attempted to amend the bill during debate on March 2 to allow the park owner to sell to a willing buyer who wants to continue operating the park. That amendment, however, was rejected.

There are 877 mobile home parks in Colorado, according to MobileHome.net, and at least 43 are located between Holyoke and Burlington. The 2017 American Community Survey, which looks at the number of manufactured homes, showed more than 96,000 statewide, and said that House District 65 with 3,987, is in the top 10 of House districts, all but one rural, for the most mobile homes. 

Hooton said there’s strong desire in mobile home parks by homeowners to preserve those communities. She cited the example of Denver Meadows, an RV park in Aurora, which was sold last year despite efforts by homeowners to purchase the park. The owners turned down the offer and the 21-acre park, near the Anschutz Medical Campus, has now been rezoned by the city of Aurora for transit development. 

Among the bill’s most controversial provisions: it allows the homeowners to assign their right to purchase to a local government for the purpose of continuing the use of the park. However, Hooton said the bill does not require the park owner to accept the offer from the local government, either.

Nineteen states already have laws on their books similar to what HB 1201 would do, some stronger, some weaker, according to a fact sheet Hooton provided.

The second bill, House Bill 1196, is a follow-up to 2019 legislation that put teeth into the enforcement of mobile homeowners’ rights. That bill, House Bill 19-1309, changed the law to require 30-days’ notice on evictions after a court has ordered an eviction; previously, someone could be evicted in as little as 48 hours. That doesn’t give homeowners time to find another place for their homes, according to proponents. 

The bill also created a dispute resolution process and a database of mobile home parks, within the Department of Local Affairs, that added a registration fee of $24 per lot per year, to be split equally between park owners and their tenants. 

Hooton told this reporter that both the 2019 and 2020 bills came out recommendations from the Department of Regulatory Agencies; the 2019 bill on enforcement was “the big lift,” she said. 

House Bill 1196 is still a work in progress, Hooton explained recently, with up to 10 amendments planned when the bill comes up for House debate. Those amendments are being worked out with mobile home park owners, she said.

During testimony on Feb 19, Rep. Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, the bill’s co-sponsor, said the bill is important to rural Colorado, especially on the Western Slope and Eastern Plains. Affordable housing is at a premium and mobile homes are a solution to the housing crisis as well as an important part of communities, she said. 

The bill addresses issues such as retaliation, lack of transparency in utility billing, improper or lack of maintenance of park infrastructure, a right to privacy and the causes for so-called “frivolous” evictions, she said. Park owners are required to provide tenants with a monthly water bill showing the amount owned by the all of tenants as well as the individual tenant.

Rep. Jim Wilson, R-Salida, the only lawmaker who lives in a mobile home, said he hasn’t seen the problems that the bills are intended to address, nor heard complaints. “Not every mobile home park owner is a bad actor,” McCluskie responded. “We need to make clear what the rules are.”  In her county, tenants in one mobile home park were put on water rationing and told they could only flush toilets once a day, she said. Clarifying the rights of mobile homeowners is necessary, she said.

Debbie Wilson, an attorney with Springman, Braden, Wilson & Pontius, represents landlords and mobile home communities. “We’re not always the most popular people in the room,” she said, but added that her clients work to be fair landlords with clean, safe housing and that residents are treated fairly. She raised a number of issues with HB 1196 as well as the 2019 bill, noting that eviction procedures have now been extended to more than three months, and that HB 1196 would stretch that out to six months or more. “When you have a house that is destroyed, or rodents, or people breaching the lease, we need to work more quickly for the good of the others in the community.” The bill also doesn’t require those being evicted to pay rent during the eviction process and that needs to be amended in the bill, she said.

Jack Regenbogen, an attorney with the left-leaning Colorado Center on Law and Policy, said that in 2017 he toured a mobile home park in Leadville, which he called “a legal desert.” The tenants’ rights to operable utilities, privacy and to live without fear or retaliation were violated routinely, he said. 

Michael Pierce of the Colorado Coalition of Manufactured Homeowners urged the committee’s support. Park owners can change the rules without the consent of residents, he noted, and that raises questions that residents would have to follow those rules. He cited one example of a park that allowed pets and then changed the rule to disallow it or others where rules are changed mid-tenancy on whether people could have gardens or visitors. “These take residents by surprise,” he said, and people don’t have the ability to contest those rules directly with the park owner, although residents can go to DOLA for dispute resolution.

The bill passed on a party-line 7-4 vote and is now awaiting debate in the full House.

In other news:

A bill jointly sponsored by Holtorf and Senator Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, on increasing speed limits on rural highways cleared in the House on Feb. 28 and is awaiting action in the State Senate.

House Bill 1178 won a 58-5 vote from the House. The measure requires the State Department of Transportation to conduct a study, due by March 1, 2021, that will look for portions of rural State highways where the speed limits can be increased without endangering the public. 

Under the bill, preference would be given to state highways that connect rural communities to cities, provide access to public or private schools or are heavily traveled when compared to other state highways. 

The speed limit would be hiked to 70 miles per hour on those identified State highways. The bill has been assigned to the Senate Transportation & Energy Committee but does not yet have a scheduled hearing date.