A bill before the General Assembly would put safeguards in place to promote accountability and affordability in mobile home parks.

More than 100,000 Coloradans live in mobile home communities, but investment funds and developers have been buying up parks and hiking up the rent, sometimes by double.

Cesiah Guadarrama Trejo, associate state director for Colorado 9to5, said rent increases are the number one concern for residents. She explained the term "mobile home" is in some ways a misnomer, because they can cost thousands of dollars to move, may be too old to survive a move, and it may be difficult to find another nearby site.

"If I live in Adams County, and I have to move my home, if the closest option to me is Grand Junction, that's not where my job is," Trejo pointed out. "That's not maybe like where your children are going to school. And so honestly, those options are very, very limited."

Colorado law allows rents to be increased once a year with 60-day notice. Trejo noted the bill would cap increases at 3% or 100% of inflation, whichever is greater in a 12-month period. She emphasized it accounts for landlords making returns on their investments, while also letting families know what they can expect to pay.

Trejo added the affordable-housing crisis is not just an urban issue, but affects residents across the state. She observed many of those who live in mobile-home communities are immigrant families, households with children, veterans, seniors and people with disabilities.

"We're talking about the most vulnerable populations and about working-class folks," Trejo stressed. "There's a lot of stigma still, in miseducation about who lives in these parks oftentimes because of what they look like on the outside."

She explained park owners are responsible for common areas and park infrastructure, while residents are responsible for their homes and anything inside.

Currently, homeowners have the option of an offer to purchase a park when it goes up for sale, if they can get 51% support among all park residents and finance the sale within 90 days. The bill would extend the timeline to 180 days, and put safeguards in place for if parks do close, landlords would be responsible for paying to move residents' mobile homes up to 100 miles, paying fair market value for the homes, or paying relocation assistance.

Jason Legg, attorney at Cadiz law and a tenants rights advocate working in partnership with Colorado 9to5, said without changes, landlords will continue to squeeze homeowners as hard as they can.

"The Mobile Home Park Act is a great law, relatively speaking, to other tenant-protection regimes that are out there," Legg asserted. "And the opportunity to purchase even is great. But so long as rent can be increased exponentially, like it has been, it swallows everything else."

As Virginia evictions rise, one group is helping low-income renters fight back.

Before the pandemic, evictions peaked at 16,000 in January 2020. An eviction moratorium kept renters housed during part of the pandemic but evictions are growing again.

Phil Storey, director of the Eviction Defense Center at the Virginia Poverty Law Center, said his office helps people navigate housing court.

"We wanted to provide not just information about things they can bring up to the judge to try and affect what happens but also some tools that'll help them do that without having to act as if they were experienced lawyers," Storey explained.

He added eviction laws are better for tenants, although they still give landlords an advantage. Affordable housing significantly declined in the state leaving many people unable to afford housing. The Eviction Defense Center operates on two websites. English speakers can use FightMyEviction.org and Spanish speakers can use NoDesalojo.org.

While the Eviction Defense Center is still relatively new, Storey is looking for ways to improve and build on it. He added they want to learn from the users taking advantage of the tools being offered.

"Obviously, we'll be able to go sort of peek behind the curtain and see which paths people are following through the information," Storey noted. "If some of them end up as dead ends or if people end up backing out of the decision tree, or things like that. We'll learn things about how to make that all better."

New York's 2025 budget takes proactive steps to address rural housing.

In the budget, $10 million was allocated for improvements to rural housing built by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Section 515 program. Rural housing organizations asked for $25 million but are grateful the state is taking action.

Mike Borges, executive director of the Rural Housing Coalition of New York, said another bill the Legislature should pass makes the Mobile and Manufactured Home Replacement Program permanent.

"Basically what that does is provide grants to low- to moderate-income people to replace their mobile homes that are dilapidated and unsafe," Borges explained.

He would also like to see administration fees increase for nonprofits taking part in the Access to Home Program, which provides accessibility modification for low- to moderate-income residents. Reports showed it got requests totaling $12 million but only got enough funding for $1 million in improvements. The Senate is poised to pass both bills, leaving the Assembly as the final hurdle.

However, the budget was not perfect for rural housing. Borges said one shortcoming of the 2025 budget were cuts to the RESTORE program, which provides emergency repairs for low-to-moderate-income seniors. He said New York should take action now to continue improving rural housing preservation and development.

"We need a comprehensive housing initiative that looks at the obstacles to building and renovating, repairing housing in rural communities," Borges contended. "The three main obstacles to that are local capacity, infrastructure and targeted programs for rural housing."

He added rural areas do not often have the same resources and capacity as urban communities. Because rural housing is in short supply because of the aging housing stock, there have been stark population declines from rural New York communities.

Orange County's Supreme Court reversed a decision letting the city of Newburgh implement state tenant protections.

The city declared a housing emergency in 2023 when a study showed a vacancy rate less than 4%. The lawsuit overturning the protections found that the study was flawed, leading the court to invalidate it.

Daniel Atonna, political coordinator for the group For the Many, said this leaves tenants in a precarious position.

"This rips away protections for tenants in over 730 apartments in the city of Newburgh," he said, "at a time when tenants all across the Hudson Valley, all across New York, are facing difficult conditions as landlords are trying to evict them and raise their rent."

The petitioner's attorney said if unchecked, the city's actions would have made drastic changes to the rental market without legal basis.

This ruling also keeps Newburgh from setting up a rent guidelines board to decide whether rent-stabilized tenants' rents should stay the same, increase or decrease. Atonna said he hopes the city redoes the survey and implements these protections.

Atonna thinks Newburgh should opt into the newly passed Good Cause Eviction protections. This could better protect tenants, although some housing advocates feel these protections are ineffective. He said many residents support having tenant protections.

"Because it's meant stabilization for the community, right? It means a strong community where their neighbors aren't getting uprooted and evicted every couple of years," he said. "So, this was something that was going to be good for everyone."

A 2021 survey found 77% of Newburgh residents would leave the city because of high rents. It also found that people spend more than 30% of their income on rent.


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