The Iowa Senate last week gave final legislative approval to a bill (House File 2562) that was supposed to protect mobile home owners from abusive practices by the owners of the land on which they are stationed. Such exploitation has grown in recent years in conjunction with an influx of out-of-state private equity capital into mobile-park land ownership.
But those who've waited years for legal protections are, to paraphrase Register reporter Ian Richardson, underwhelmed. The Iowa Attorney General's office even says that, if signed, this law would leave that population worse off than it is now.
A good indication of that may be that the only group lobbying in favor of the final bill is the Iowa Manufactured Housing Association, the business group representing mobile home manufacturers, retailers and communities: in other words, some of the very forces that mobile home residents seek legal protections from. The association fought another version of the bill introduced last year, apparently scaring its patrons in the Legislature away from it.
This isn't just a cautionary tale about how a piece of legislation introduced to protect one set of interests can end up doing the opposite. Sadly, it's also a story of the plight of one of America's most marginalized groups: mobile homeowners. The bill especially caught my attention because, in the same week it passed, I watched Sara Terry's eye-opening documentary, "A Decent Home," chronicling the growing struggles of mobile home owners around the country. One of the three parks it focuses on is Golf View in North Liberty, Iowa, some of whose residents interviewed were closely following the path of this legislation. Terry is bringing the film to Iowa for screenings next week.
She calls mobile homes "the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S." On top of their economic struggles, mobile home residents bear the brunt of disparaging cultural stereotypes that people feel free to throw around without fear of giving offense. Some of us are old enough to remember how Bill Clinton's presidential campaign strategist James Carville, looking to quell stories about an out-of-wedlock and possibly coercive sexual encounter Clinton had with a woman, suggested she'd been used by the former president's political adversaries. “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” Carville quipped.
In a phone interview, Terry said that "trailer trash" is the only pejorative you can still get away with calling people without being seen as a bigot.
There are an estimated 49,500 mobile home parks across the U.S. Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns the largest mobile home manufacturer, Clayton Homes, and the two largest lenders, according to the film. There are some 20 million mobile park residents in the U.S., including senior citizens, veterans, people with disabilities and new immigrants. On average they have incomes of $30,000. One Latinx couple interviewed on film said being able to afford a mobile home was the only thing standing between them and homelessness. They had previously been sleeping in their car. And it was clear from the way they decorated and cared for their mobile home that it was the realization of their American dream.
But as a promo for the film indicates, some such homes are becoming out of reach to low-income dwellers "as private equity firms and wealthy investors buy up parks, making sky-high returns on their investments." Since they don't own the land their homes sit on, mobile home owners are vulnerable to eviction by the park owners, as well as sudden jumps in rent and more. Iowa is one of many states whose laws do little to protect them.
Recent Register stories have captured some of their plights. A 2019 story by Richardson told of a single mother of two living in Midwest Country Estates in Waukee, whose rent on the plot she had occupied for 12 years was increasing 69% under new ownership, from $205 to $500. She said she'd have to take a second job to cover expenses. A 91-year-old living on her federal pension who had been there nearly 50 years said it would take her bottom dollar.
Havenpark Capital bought the 64-acre plot for $17.5 million and said in a notice that, without the increase, the land could be bought for apartments or a large retail store. In the film, Golf View Mobile Home Park residents organize against a sale that would jack up homeowner-turned-activist Candi Evans' rent 63%. She had lived there 21 years.
Residents of a park in Aurora, Colorado, that was going up for sale said other parks don't want to let in older trailers. They'd been given a year to move but lacked both savings and a destination. It can cost $25,000 to move a mobile home, a resident says on film before a zoning hearing that would decide whether her park would be rezoned and sold for a high price by its owner. Owners who can't afford to move their home end up forfeiting their investment.
Tenants advocating for tougher laws say the current ones offer them no protection against huge rent increases, or the frequency of those increases, or high charges for utilities, and evictions without cause. And unlike other housing, manufactured homes depreciate in value.
The Iowa Attorney General's Office has been working to get protections for mobile home owners since 1999, when it sought to require that landlords have just cause to terminate their leases, said Lynn Hicks, chief of staff to Attorney General Tom Miller. That's still not required. "If some of these protections would have been enacted years ago, we may have avoided some of the problems mobile home owners have faced over the last two to three years," Hicks said in an interview.
The legislation that passed in Iowa last week would give residents an additional one-month notice on rent increases or non-renewals. The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Brian Lohse, a Bondurant Republican, had sought a stronger one, but called it a compromise with the lobby group that has the ear of the majority of lawmakers.
A memo from the attorney general's office expressed dismay that the bill doesn't require the landlord provide a legitimate reason for ending a tenancy; doesn't limit the number of rent increases (the bill says they will be for one year unless otherwise specified) or their amount or regulate the landlords' ability to charge extra fees above monthly rent.
Under amendments offered by Democratic Sens. Zach Wahls of Iowa City and Sarah Trone Garriott of Windsor Heights, a landlord wouldn't be able to raise rent unless necessary to meet increased operating costs or to maintain or improve the park or make capital improvements or special repairs, to meet increased property taxes or utility costs or insurance costs, or to keep up with market rental rates. All are reasonable and necessary provisions but were rejected by the majority.
Likewise, last year's proposed bill would have limited rent increases to once a year, but that was going "much too far," according to House Speaker Pat Grassley of New Hartford, a Republican. The general counsel for the Iowa Manufactured Housing Association said the bill would pose too great a financial hardship on landlords.
Where is any semblance of balance here? Aren't lawmakers who want to keep the scales tilted in favor of land owners at least self-conscious about appearing to pander to big-money interests over some of their states' poorer residents?
Terry, who will be in town for next week's screenings, says she sees in Iowans "a deep-rooted sense of fairness and a dislike of outsiders coming in and taking advantage of Iowans." She's had a lot of support from Iowans for the film.
Asked if she sees any broader solutions than what the Legislature offers, Terry suggested land trusts and city ownership of some of the park lands. It's just wrong to leave this population, which already has so many challenges, to the whims of private groups motivated purely by increasing profits. At the least, there should be strict controls on what plot owners can and can't do. At best, cities, counties and the state could work together to find public lands to house mobile homes for reasonable rates.
Some in the business of acquiring such properties apparently aren't self-conscious either. Frank Rolfe, the nation's sixth-largest owner with his partner of mobile home parks and the founder of Mobile Home University, has no qualms about openly likening a mobile home park to a Waffle House, where the customers are chained to their booths. Rolfe can also be heard telling prospective investors, as recorded on Terry's film, that it's unwise to make friends with those customers.
"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" showed a clip from another of Terry's films in the works, in which Rolfe tells a class, "One of the big drivers to making money is the ability to increase the rent. … If we didn’t have them hostage, if they weren’t stuck in those homes in the mobile home lots, it would be a whole different picture.”
Enough said.
