The state Senate’s Housing committee released a bill this week that could help stem costly legal fights over rent increases in Delaware’s manufactured home parks.
Rent increases at Delaware’s manufactured home parks — a key source of affordable housing in the state's rural areas — frequently turn into costly legal disputes between park residents and landowners. Meanwhile, conditions in many parks deteriorate, with residents of more than a dozen Sussex County parks complaining of unresolved health and safety problems like raw sewage leaks.
State Sen. John Walsh’s bill is the result of lengthy negotiations between tenants and landowners. It would create a formula for increasing rents agreed upon by both sides and make more tenants eligible for state rental assistance. Walsh says the bill would also prevent landowners from increasing rent if they don’t address outstanding health and safety problems.
“We definitely want to make sure that the bad actors take care of their tenants and shouldn’t be allowed automatic rent increases," he said. "This bill is a way to clean that up.”
Walsh noted that while local landowners participated in the conversations that shaped the bill, national companies that own parks in Delaware generally did not.
William Kinnick, the head of the Delaware Manufactured Home Owners’ Association, says some tenant protections aren’t addressed in the bill’s current form.
“If we don’t do the things we’re responsible for, they have a section that they can take us to court and get us evicted from our own homes that we own," he said. "So we’re trying to get that applied to the other side of the fence, which is the landowners.”
If passed by the legislature, the bill would only be in effect for a five-year trial period. The Senate housing committee released the bill with no opposition.
