WA mobile homeowners, advocates react to new rent stabilization law

Valdez said her lot rent — what she pays for the ground under her mobile home — had nearly doubled in the past decade, and she expected to face another $100-a-month increase in July.

“$100 – it’s like worth a week of groceries for my kids, it’s half of my energy bill, it’s a pair of shoes for my kids, it’s even having to choose to have a Saturday evening at the movies, or an ice cream or something,” she said. “We have the right to enjoy life.”

Many other mobile home residents and housing advocates shared Valdez’s sense of long-awaited relief after Gov. Bob Ferguson signed House Bill 1217 in May, introducing annual caps on rent increases for the first time in the state’s history. The bill also added new limits on move-in fees, security deposits and late fees for mobile home tenants.

“We can’t express how thankful that we are that we have that stability, that we know what’s coming down the pike, and we can plan for it,” said Deb Wilson, a housing organizer and president of the Leisure Manor Tenants Association in Aberdeen. 

But other mobile home residents told Cascade PBS their community landlords announced significant rent increases in the final months before the new law went into effect, trying to lock in hikes of up to 34% ahead of the governor’s signature. Communities may see legal challenges as tenants push to hold landlords to the established state cap, while landlords argue the limits will undermine housing growth when it is needed most. 

The Legislative victory has proven bittersweet for Elva Simmons, a Yakima mobile homeowner and housing organizer featured in last year’s Cascade PBS documentary Priced Out. Even with the new limits, Simmons said the latest round of hikes at her Hurst & Son LLC-owned community has maxed out her fixed income. She has started looking for a more affordable mobile home community.

“My income being the way it is, I would still have to move out,” she said. “As soon as I find a place, I will definitely be putting this one up for sale.” 

‘An incredible victory’

The new limit on annual rent increases comes after years of advocacy and organizing from mobile home owners across the state, often in response to large property management companies or private equity purchasing their parks and raising rents year after year. Mobile home owners, many of whom are low-income seniors on Social Security, have warned that unregulated hikes, along with compounding maintenance fees, have increasingly threatened them with “economic eviction” and the risk of homelessness. 

Wilson, who has championed tenant protections alongside her neighbors after Hurst & Son bought her park and raised rents, emphasized how long mobile home residents have felt like their housing stability was slipping away. Every year, they waited to see how bad the rent increases would be or if fees would also go up.

“You hold your breath because you were holding it already,” she said. “And you have to hold your breath while you figure out if you can afford that. And then you hold your breath for the rest of the time waiting for the next notice. So you just never have a chance to breathe. And now we do.”

Valdez said that housing costs drove her out of Olympia 11 years ago. She has since watched rent increases squeeze her finances each year in Elma. She said she welcomed any predictability for the future. 

Ishbel Dickens, a retired attorney and longtime mobile homeowner rights advocate, told Cascade PBS that lawmakers and advocates alike had to compromise on some aspects of the bill in order to see its way to the governor – but regardless, “It’s an incredible victory and the result of a lot of very, very hard work on behalf of many, many people.”

“The overall sense is one of relief and just that real sense of security in your own home is so vital, especially when a lot of the manufactured homeowners are seniors and just need to know that they will not be economically evicted,” she added.

The compromise, Dickens explained, is that if a mobile homeowner chooses to sell their home and transfer their lease to another homeowner, at the time of sale a landlord can raise lot rent by more than 5%, before they must abide by rent caps upon the next lease renewal. That being said, a landlord will still have to notify the new purchaser if that will happen.

“The saving grace for me is that the manufactured homeowners I know aren’t planning on selling – they’re long-term homeowners in communities that they’re choosing to live in,” she said.

Housing developers and landlords repeatedly pushed back against the rental increase cap, arguing that limiting the ability to keep up with costs or see a return on investments would undermine efforts to expand much-needed housing. Chester Baldwin, a lobbyist for the Rental Housing Association and executive director of Manufactured Housing Communities of Washington, testified before the Legislature against the bill. He warned that rent stabilization would have “eviscerated” Ferguson’s plan to build 200,000 new housing units. 

“The state of Washington needs a half a trillion [dollars] in economic investment in housing,” Baldwin said. “And this rent control bill will make sure that that investment in housing doesn’t come, just as we’ve seen in other states.”

Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, told Cascade PBS that “literally hundreds of thousands of dollars” were spent by lobbyists and corporations to oppose the bill. She noted that tenant advocates accepted a number of compromises to adopt at least a basic level of protection against rent-gouging. 

“The odds were really against us,” she said, but ultimately “grassroots power and consistent, truthful communication by constituents over and over again about the injustices that they’re facing at home won the day.”

Preemptive hikes

In late May, residents of Olympic Village Mobile Home park in Port Townsend received notices from their management company, Park Manager LLC, that an announced 34% rental increase “complied with the laws in effect at the time, and … therefore the implementation of a legal rent increase does not violate the new laws.” 

(The notice also acknowledged the issue would likely go to court, so the owner would be offering tenants a monthly “credit” to bring the increase down to 5% until there was more legal clarity.)

Leigh Christianson, a tenant of Olympic Village, tensed at the idea of a 34% rent increase. She and her neighbors had just been celebrating HB 1217, grateful to finally afford medication or the occasional night out.

“We found out that we were priced out of Snohomish County … and we always liked coming to Port Townsend to get away, and we saw the place that we were in now, ‘Oh, this is great, you know, we can afford this,’” she said. “We’ll have a little left over to go to the movies and here we are stuck with a $200 rent increase.”

Mike Saddler, a tenant of a Collective Communities LLC-owned park in nearby Sequim, said he also received a notice that his rent would increase by more than 5% shortly before HB 1217 went into effect. He has since attempted to rally his neighbors into mass-emailing their landlord and asserting their rights as prescribed in the new law. 

Saddler plans to pay the capped 5% rate, instead of the one proposed in his new lease. His argument is that if he were to pay the higher rent of $595 and then file a dispute, “[Collective Communities] is getting the idea that they can intimidate you,” he said.

“[Collective Communities] have been in the news repeatedly for large lot rent increases, lack of maintenance, lack of communication, legal communication with their residents and so on and so forth,” he said. “We’re just another one of their casualties in terms of getting them to comply with laws. I told the residents, we’re not here to make trouble. CC is the one making the trouble. We’re here to solve the problems that they have created.”

Sebastian Miller, who until recently served as an assistant attorney general with the state’s Manufactured Housing Dispute Resolution Program, now represents mobile home tenants in private practice. He said he has already been in contact with numerous mobile home tenants across the state, who have reported last-minute rent hikes above 5%.

Miller said he has mostly advised tenants that they could “just pay the 5% [rate] and see what happens.”

“Make them take you to court over it, and if all the tenants do that, they’re not going to be able to question more than 5%,” he said. “I would just be really surprised if a judge upholds a rent increase over 5%.”

Some mobile home residents are looking ahead to new policy work. Wilson in Aberdeen said she is eyeing a run for City Council. Tenant advocates also continue to direct complaints to the state’s dispute program, which earlier this year announced $5.5 million in refunds to Hurst & Son tenants following a nearly two-year investigation into the Port Orchard-based management company. 

Simmons in Yakima is one of the many tenants who received some reimbursement for her troubles. It does not seem like it will be enough to keep her in her current home long-term, but her voice crackled over the phone as she recounted the sense of solidarity she’s built over the years organizing for her fellow tenants. 

The new rent increase caps would not have been made possible without her neighbors’ sacrifices, she explained, as she watched them face down verbal abuse and retaliation in their pursuit of housing rights.

“They’re the heroes of all this,” she said. “They’re the ones that did the work, and they’re the ones that deserve all the praise.”