“It is a slap in the face”:
Residents react to Gov. Reynolds signing bill into law granting protections for mobile home park tenants
MAY 18, 2022 | REPUBLISHED BY LIT: MAY 19, 2022
WATERLOO, Iowa (KWWL)- Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law on Tuesday that protects the rights of people in mobile home parks. It increases rent hikes and eviction notices from 60 to 90 days.
“That is of little consequence to us, and it’s almost an insult,”
Candi Evans, who lives at Golf View Mobile Home Park in North Liberty, said.
“If you live in affordable housing, and you have an extra 30 days to come up with $8 to $15,000 or more dollars to move your home, chances are you can’t.”
For the last several years, local mobile home park residents have been working with state lawmakers to fight against what they call “predatory practices” by out-of-state companies that own their property.
Karla Krapfl moved into the Table Mound Mobile Home Park in Dubuque in 1987.
At the time, her rent was $87. Five years ago, it was $170, but after an out-of-state company took over the mobile home parks, she said the cost of rent and other fees have skyrocketed.
“When your rent increases, you know, 35, 50 bucks, that’s a lot of money with somebody on a fixed income. We used to go up $5 to $10 a month, which is fine. People can swing it,”
Krapfl, who serves as President of the Table Mound Mobile Home Association, said.
“If you got a young couple or an elderly resident, that’s a lot of money.”
Krapfl said the most recent increase wasn’t a flat rate. Some went up by $35, others went up to $40 or $45, and others increased in the $50 to $65 range.
Some residents on a fixed income have struggled to keep up with the rising rates and have been forced to make difficult choices between paying rent and paying for medicine or food.
“This is just a band-aid they’re putting on it,”
Krapfl said.
“It’s not helping residents at all.”
This bill, House File 2562 does not include any significant things Evans, Krapfl and the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents Network asked for.
Table Mound Mobile Home Association, Midwest Country Estates Residents Association and Golfview Residents Association are part of the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents Network, a collection of mobile home parks from across the state.
The group is fighting to codify their rights as renters and stop companies from raising prices to levels residents can’t afford.
Their main requests were for limits to the amount and frequency of rent hikes, requiring park owners to give a reason if they don’t renew a lease and first right of refusal for residents if the park is up for sale.
Evans said not having any of those issues addressed felt like a slap in the face.
“It’s not only disappointing, but it’s also angering that after all this time and explaining this to people, they think they’re doing us a favor by giving us a bill that hurts us even more,”
Evans said.
“This isn’t Iowa nice.”
The Iowa Manufactured Home Association, which represents mobile home park owners, supported the bill. Executive Director Andy Conlin said the bill did have some things they disagreed with, but it “meaningfully balanced the interests of tenants and landlords.”
Conlin said he is open to conversations about further protections, but anything that includes rent control or limits the ability of a landowner to exercise private property rights is a non-starter. He said it does not work and is bad public policy.
“We believe that everywhere that it’s been enacted, it has failed. We’ve seen some pretty disastrous impacts, for example, of a rent control ballot initiative that passed in the city of St. Paul, Minnesota,”
Conlin said.
“Rent control will lead to negative public policy consequences down the line, and that’s just simply the reality.”
Conlin admitted there were a few situations where landlords increased rents at rates that “didn’t make sense,” but most are in line with “fair market value.”
“Oftentimes, it’s because you’ve got a community where either the prior owner simply didn’t keep the rent up with the market rate, or the prior owner didn’t invest in the infrastructure, the community,”
he said.
“You get into these communities with crumbling roads, bad infrastructure, or bad wiring, and you’ve got a landlord who’s got to come in there and make those improvements at their expense.”
The bill Governor Reynolds signed into law also prevents landlords from forcing tenants to modify their homes in ways that make them harder to move later and subjects utilities to the same notification period as rent and evictions unless the park owners are not notified of rate changes within 90 days.
The 90-day notification period and another part of the law offering tenants legal remedies if owners don’t provide essential services took effect immediately after Reynolds signed the bill into law.
Krapfl said they will not give up their fight for more protections and plan to make another run at it next year.
“We have more work to do, and we’ll have to fight a lot harder and get people to see what is happening,”
she said.
“We need to change laws, and we need to protect our elderly and the vulnerable.”.
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