Latest news with #MobileHomes
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Climate
- Washington Post
Why mobile homes get hit hard by extreme weather and how to build better
Mobile homes are among the most frequent casualties of extreme weather. They are regularly swept away in floods, including this month in Central Texas and New Mexico. They are often hit hard by hurricanes and destroyed by wildfires. That's partly because parks designed for mobile homes, recreational vehicles and manufactured housing are typically located on less expensive land that is at higher risk for hazards. It's also partly a result of how older mobile homes were built.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Michigan led on safe water after Flint, but mobile home parks are stubborn rough spot
Mobile Homes Water Problems Michigan After the Flint water crisis, Michigan became a national leader on safe drinking water, requiring the removal of lead pipes and the reduction of harmful 'forever chemicals' years before the federal government acted. But the state has a blind spot when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of people who live in its mobile home parks. Regulators say they have little power to enforce the rules in the state's estimated 100 or more unlicensed parks when owners fail to provide safe water. The problem is compounded by private equity firms that have been buying up parks over the past two decades and now control about 1 in every 6 parks in Michigan — among the highest rates in the country, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a group that advocates against such purchases. Officials say it can be a struggle to even contact those park owners, let alone get them to comply with regulations. 'With private equity moving into this space, the goal these companies seem to have is to return the absolute highest return they can to investors even if that means providing inadequate service or engaging in exploitative practices, or unsafe practices for the residents,' said state Sen. John Cherry, a Democrat who sponsored legislation to strengthen enforcement in the communities. But the state doesn't attempt to track unlicensed parks. And an industry spokesperson said Michigan officials — particularly law enforcement — have the power to do more if they choose. Rare pursuit of an unlicensed mobile home park At North Morris Estates where Theo Gantos lives outside Flint, conditions got so bad that the state refused to renew the park's license to operate. Water often flowed weakly from the tap because the wells that service the park didn't produce enough, Gantos said. Sometimes the water was discolored. It could stain laundry and destroy appliances. He installed a multistage filter system just to be able to use it. Eventually, local law enforcement investigated. In March, the owner pleaded guilty to a criminal charge for operating without a license, agreeing to pay a fine and sell the park. That might not have happened if Gantos had not been so pugnacious. He spent years battling Homes of America, an affiliate of private equity group Alden Global Capital that local prosecutors said owns North Morris. That included filing a public records request for emails on officials' handling of problems at his park, pushing regulators to enforce rules and speaking out to media over what he calls blight conditions. 'These guys, they don't care,' Gantos said about complying with the rules. Representatives of North Morris and Homes of America, including an attorney who appeared for the park in legal proceedings, did not respond to messages seeking comment. The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, called LARA, has the authority to inspect and investigate complaints at licensed mobile home parks. But it's typically fallen to law enforcement to pursue criminal charges against unlicensed parks. The North Morris conviction for operating without a license is likely the first such under the state's mobile home law that has been on the books since 1987, the county prosecutor said. John Lindley, president and CEO of the industry group Michigan Manufactured Housing Association, said the rarity of such cases is evidence that state and local law enforcement are choosing not to enforce the rules. 'This whole notion that, 'There's nothing we can do about this.' Clearly there is, or that prosecution wouldn't have taken place,' Lindley said. 'Not having the authority to go after communities that don't have a license is completely different from choosing not to go after those. And what we've seen so far with both the state and local units of government is they've elected not to.' Shutting down a park is a bad option Mobile home parks without a license are 'essentially operating unregulated,' Cherry said. One of the state's few options is to shut down a park, a rarely used last resort that can mean throwing people out of their homes. Mobile home parks have long been an important affordable housing option. But that affordability is fading. A study by Lending Tree, a lending marketplace, found new mobile home sale prices rose more than 50% nationally from 2018 to 2023 — new single-family home price averages, by contrast, rose 38% over that period. Last year, LARA supported legislation that would have given the department more power to penalize unlicensed parks, force parks to provide owner contact information and limit rent increases. That failed. This year, Democratic Sen. Jeff Irwin has proposed a narrower law that would give state drinking water officials more power to make sure water in all mobile home parks is drinkable. Right now, they only have direct authority over parks that provide their own water. But it's common for parks to take city water from a pipe connecting to the nearby town. That water is usually safe when it reaches the park, but if the park's water pipes crack or fail, water protections won't apply on the private property. That keeps officials from stepping in and forcing change except in limited situations when there's a public health threat. It can leave residents unsure where to turn when the owner refuses to fix problems. 'We take those issues very seriously,' said Eric Oswald, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy's drinking water and environmental health division. He said they try to work with licensing officials to ensure water is safe, though 'the problem is, I'm not resourced for that.' The Michigan Manufactured Housing Association opposed last year's legislation, arguing it would make mobile homes less affordable. The group says it supports extending water protections to within parks, as called for in this year's legislation. It passed the state Senate in late June and is now in the GOP-controlled House. ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Takeaways from AP's report on water quality and safety at US mobile home parks
Mobile Homes Water Problems More than 50 years after the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed to assure Americans of safe water, millions of people living in mobile home parks can't always count on those basic protections. The Associated Press examined an Environmental Protection Agency database on violations by water systems across the country, ranging from the tiniest up to major metropolitan areas. AP also surveyed states for their oversight of water systems. Here's a look at key findings from the AP report: Mobile home parks violate water rules more than cities and towns Nearly 70% of mobile home parks that run their own water systems violated safe drinking water rules over the past five years. That's well above the rate for cities (48%) and larger towns (57%), according to EPA data. The U.S. has some 50,000 water utilities, most serving small towns and rural areas. Many struggle to find expert staff and funding, and they violate clean water rules more often than the handful of large utilities that serve cities. But even among the hard-pressed small utilities, mobile home parks stand out. The AP analysis found that more than half these parks failed to perform a required test for at least one contaminant or failed to properly report the results, in the past five years. And they are far more likely to be repeat offenders of safe drinking water rules overall. Some mobile home parks go unmonitored The problems may go beyond what the figures show. Some parks don't appear in EPA's database at all and may go completely unregulated. For example, EPA officials were investigating high levels of cancer-causing arsenic in tap water at a Southern California mobile home park in 2021 when they realized there were several others in the area that weren't in their records, said Amy Miller, a former EPA head of enforcement in the region. Some were found to have high levels of arsenic that residents had been drinking for years. It's impossible to know how many under-the-radar parks there are. Most states aren't actively looking for them and say they don't find very many. There's another way that problems with mobile home park water can escape attention. Some mobile home parks get their water from an outside source — a nearby town, for example. That water can be safe when it reaches the park boundary but become contaminated if the park has substandard or poorly installed piping. The EPA doesn't generally track water once it's on private property, so those problems can go unseen. It may not be easy to escape bad water Bad water isn't always unsafe. Residents of mobile home parks in Michigan, Iowa and elsewhere reported taps that frequently ran dry or problems with discolored water that looked like coffee or tea, stained their laundry and made them fearful to open their mouths in the shower, for example. If residents are unhappy with management's response to such problems, it can be difficult to leave. That's because 'mobile' homes aren't all that mobile. Residents often own the home but rent the land they sit on, and it's difficult and expensive to move them. Esther Sullivan, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, calls residents 'halfway homeowners' because of this dynamic. She said they often put up with problems because of the difficulty in moving. Almost 17 million people in the U.S. live in mobile homes. What some states are doing Utah is the rare state that enforces safe drinking water standards even within parks that get their water from another provider, according to AP's survey of states. And Colorado passed a law in 2023 that requires testing the water in every mobile home park. It gives health officials the ability to go beyond federal law to address taste, color and smell that can make people afraid to drink their water, even when it's not a health risk. ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit Solve the daily Crossword
