LYNNWOOD—Almost 200 residents throughout western Snohomish County filled the dining hall of Homage Senior Services on Thursday, May 30, to attend a Manufactured Home Ownership Forum hosted by George Hurst, Lynnwood City Council President, and Pam Hurst, Legislative Lead, Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance; Dave Ross of KIRO Radio moderated the event.

The purpose of the forum was to bring together agencies, legislators, and residents to learn about economic eviction, share available services to help residents alleviate the burden from economic eviction, and hear the plight of residents.

“They are scared, they don’t know what to do and they are looking to us for answers,” President Hurst told the Lynnwood Times after the forum. “We need to do some quick action to stop any type of eviction of these residents.”

Hurst shared that he will be assessing the feasibility then reaching out to the county to provide “some stop gap funding rental assistance” until House Bill 2114, or similar legislation, passes and takes effect.

“We have to make sure these people do not get evicted from their own homes,” Hurst added. “We are going to have to do something.”

House Bill 2114, co-sponsored by Representative Strom Peterson (D-Edmonds), a rent stabilization bill for manufactured homeowners, passed the house but stumbled in the Senate this last session.

The bill, if passed, would have improved housing stability for tenants, subject to the residential landlord-tenant act and the manufactured/mobile home landlord-tenant act, by limiting rent and fee increases, requiring notice of rent and fee increases, limiting fees and deposits, establishing a landlord resource center and associated services, authorizing tenant lease termination, creating parity between lease types, and providing for attorney general enforcement.

“This is a subject we have had work sessions on and passed legislation on but when you hear the upfront and personal it adds to the immediacy of the problem,” Representative Peterson told the Lynnwood Times.

Peterson added that although he chairs the Housing Committee in the House of Representatives, listening firsthand to the depth of the problem “happening right here in our community” is why HB 2114 is set to be reintroduced to the legislature in the 2025 legislative session.

However, some of the residents at the forum fear they won’t make it another year if the legislation passes assuming the bill takes effect that year.

“After I pay for water, electricity, cable groceries, and my medication I am left with nine dollars at the end of the month,” one resident on fixed income, who requested to remain anonymous, told the Lynnwood Times.

State law, RCW 59.20 specifically, governs the relationship between the homeowners living in manufactured housing communities and their landlords. This law is separate and differential from the residential landlord/tenant law because in the 1970’s the state legislature acknowledged that people who own their homes but rent the land under their homes required separate and different protections.

Rents for the plot of land in manufactured housing communities have increased anywhere between 20% and 60% in Washington state. In one manufactured housing community in southwest Washington rent increased $1,000 a month.

Overall, Lynnwood has 20 manufactured home parks, 15 within the city limits and six in unincorporated Lynnwood. For comparison Mountlake Terrace has three manufactured home parks, Edmonds has two, Mill Creek has one, Mukilteo has none.

The Hursts championed the forum after hearing from residents of Royalwood Estates, a manufactured housing community in Lynnwood, about rising rents. Last year after corporate investor Collective Communities bought the community, tenants were hit with as much as a $300 monthly increase plus added fees that year. With the rent set to increase another $100 this summer, tenants shared at the forum the stresses of not being able to keep up with the ever-increasing cost of rent.

Over the last 12 months, the Consumer Price Index in April 2024 for the Seattle area has increased 4.4 percent. Food prices up 0.9 percent, rent up 5.9 percent, and energy prices up 3.2 percent. The index for all items less food and energy increased 4.9 percent over the year.

Since April of 2020, the cumulative impact of inflation for the Seattle area as of April 2024 is 23.8 percent. In other words, one dollar in April of 2020 is now worth 76.2 cents of its original purchasing power. Over the last four years, food prices are up 24.8 percent, rent up 22.8 percent, and energy prices up 53.8 percent.

Prior to Collective Communities purchasing Royalwood Estates back in March of 2023, it had been family-owned for several years. But when its owners passed away, the ownership was passed down to kin who simply didn’t want the responsibility of owning and operating it, leading to unfunded maintenance.

Jake Bond of Collective Communities, shared with attendees that the primary reasons for rent increases were major infrastructure improvements due to the lack of adequate maintenance over the years and inflation.

“Within the last three or four months, we had probably seventy to eighty thousand dollars’ worth of sewer repairs,” Bond said. “Some of these issues are issues tenets have been complaining about [prior to Collective Communities assuming ownership] for years and years that were not addressed.”

Bond also shared how they are now replacing a community center due to mold and its severe unstable condition. He told the Lynnwood Times that Collective Communities is working to an adequate funding maintenance schedule to prevent what previous landlords failed to do, invest in the future infrastructure of properties.

During the forum, it was learned that property owners of manufactured home parks are not required by state law to share its maintenance reserve plan with tenets. Both Peterson and Hurst told the Lynnwood Times that provides an opportunity to offer legislation at both the state and local levels for some transparency to tenets to understand better the long-term financial upkeep for their properties and accountability to landlords who may intentionally underfund capital improvements for short-term profits.

Peterson shared that he will discuss with the Attorney General’s Office if there is a way for the state to provide some funding for infrastructure improvements for manufactured home communities. The current legal barrier, he said, is the justification of using state funds to assist privately-owned businesses—the landlords—unless there is a “public good.”

“This is an area of deeply affordable housing, especially for our senior communities that needs to be preserved,” Peterson told attendees. “A lot of manufactured housing communities, they put their community up for sale because it might be a family-owned place that they owned it for years and years, decades, and they don’t have the money to put in the needed infrastructure changes—the sewer system is collapsing, they need new water pipes, they need all new electrical throughout the community. I’m trying to figure out away if the state can make those investments.”

The private sale of Royalwood to Collective Communities was part of a three-community manufactured home park deal which also included properties in Bothell and Gig Harbor. Collective Communities, based out of California, has been active in purchasing manufactured housing properties since at least 2020.

Lawmakers did pass a bill this session that requires landlords to give a two-year notice (from one year) before they can close a manufactured housing community. This might not seem like much of an improvement, given owners of manufactured homes essentially surrender their houses, their largest asset when relocating, but it’s still better than most other states in the nation.

Within this same legislation, when landlords decide to sell their community, they are now required to notify the homeowners, housing authorities, and other eligible organizations including resident-owned communities and land trusts so that these organizations may make an offer and potentially preserve these communities. However, because of high land values, it can be a challenge for nonprofits to secure the funding needed to purchase the land.

Manufactured Home Ownership Public Forum

The Manufactured Home Ownership Public Forum had three panels of speakers listed below. An audience 30-minute Q&A session concluded the event.

Panel 1– Manufactured Home Ownership (30 min)

• Anne Sadler – Washington Association of Manufactured Home Owners
• Ishbel Dickens – retired attorney, advocate
• Duane Leonard – Housing Authority of Snohomish County
• Jake Bond – Collective Communities Property Management

Panel 2– Resources for the MHO Community (30min)

• Kim Toskey – Homes and Hope Community Land Trust
• Victoria O’Banion – ROC NW
• Washington State Department of Commerce
  • Ann Campbell – Managing Director Homeownership Unit
  • Brigid Henderson- Manager Manufactured Home Relocation          
• Washington State Attorney General Office
  • Seann Colgan- Litigation Section Chief-Consumer Protection
• Susan Chriest – Snohomish County Housing and Community Services

Panel 3– Elected Officials looking for solutions (30 min)

• Strom Peterson – 32nd LD State Representative and County Councilman
• June Robinson – 38th LD State Senator
• George Hurst – Lynnwood City Council

Editor’s Note: Kienan Briscoe contributed to this article.