Month: June 2018

From Victim to Activist – a floating home owner’s journey from darkness to community service

We are a Floating Home Owner Tenant Movement!!!

Angela Garvin was invited as a guest on Columbia County radio station KOHI AM1600 for a 2-part series to tell the story of her journey from an enthusiastic and excited, first-time, floating home owner to becoming the victim of a marina landlord who violated her rights to a near-breaking point and how surviving that experience gave her inspiration to help empower a community of floating home owners who rent their slips.

Many floating home marina owners operate their marinas very professionally, some even hire professional management companies, and their tenants have very few issues and enjoy their floating homes immensely – it truly is an incredible way of life! This is not that story.

Some floating home tenants cause real problems for their landlords and their neighbors by dealing drugs, disturbing the peace or not paying their rent.  This is not that story either.

Angela’s marina owners frequently made up rules which, in effect, prevented her and her family from being able to move in and live in their floating home for years, all while she was still responsible for paying rent to the moorage.  In constant fear of being kicked out of the moorage should she refuse the owners any of their requests, she searched for any laws pertaining to floating home owners which she might find useful or an organization who could advocate her as a floating home owner but she came up empty each time.

At one point, she was living in her 3rd temporary housing situation (one of the FIVE total temporary rental homes before her ordeal was done and she was finally able to move into her floating home permanently), when she became curious about what rights a tenant has who rents a floating home from a landlord who is also a floating home owner who rents their slip from a marina.   So, she did a quick web search for “Oregon floating home tenants.”

What came up was not what she expected.  For the first time, she realized that, in her own situation as a floating home owner at a rental moorage, even though she was a home owner, she was considered a tenant first under Oregon law. By searching under tenant laws after this discovery, she quickly discovered the existence of a package of Oregon laws which specifically protect floating home owners who own their homes and rent their slips.  She realized that she and her family had been victims of marina owners who had been demanding things that are not allowed under Oregon Statue Law.

Armed with this new information, she took that experience, and vowed to do all she could to make sure that didn’t happen again to other floating home owners.  Angela then teamed up with a group which drafts legislation for manufactured housing community tenants because floating home owners are in similar circumstances (manufactured home owners who own their manufactured houses, but rent space at a park, are similar to floating home owners who own their homes and rent slip space at a marina).

Inspired, Angela then set out to inform and share information about what she’d learned with other floating home owners at her marina – she knew that she was not the only one whose rights had been violated but found that tenants at her marina were too frightened of the perceived wrath of their landlord and being targeted in retaliation for joining a tenant group – a common occurrence at moorages where the landlords either don’t know the laws of believe they are above them.  So, she broadened her search for floating home owner tenants who might need help and sent out mailings and flyers to reach nearly every rental marina in the Portland, Scappoose and St. Helens waterways.

Floating home owner tenants from everywhere came out to learn about what was going on with floating home laws and their rights.   And together, the group of floating home owners have rallied and are making a difference.  They are changing laws and will no longer settle for just living in fear.

If you missed the shows and are curious about how the Floating Home Owner group came to be and a detailed account of Angela’s story, you can listen here.  Just scroll down to “Listen to Clean Columbia County Odd Friday, navigate to the folder with 2018 shows, and download both shows (June 8th and June 15th, 2018) to listen.

 

What happened at the June 19 MH Coalition Meeting?

Several floating home tenants were in attendance – Thank you for participating!!!  No marina landlords were present which was a little surprising.  But some landlord attorneys were present.
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SUBMETERING

At the beginning of the meeting, they flipped the order of the agenda to accommodate a person who was presenting about submetering.  The result was that the first 2.5 hours of the MH Coalition meeting was spent on submetering of water and other utilities.   Most marinas that are represented by our group thus far are known to be on well water.  By law, a landlord cannot submeter well water so this doesn’t apply to broadly to our group.

However, we would desperately like to hear from any Floating Home Owners at rental moorages who obtain their water from a municipal source.  We suspect that some rental moorages on the Columbia River may be on city water and, perhaps, those in St. Helens.  So, if you are a floating home owner at a rental moorage and are on city water, this applies to you and we want to hear from you!!  Otherwise, we have no known issues with the submetering law and cannot improve it for you.

The good news is that the MH Coalition made progress on this topic and are getting closer to actual draft legislation language which means that we will spend less and less time talking about submetering. They also said that the next meetings will start with Dispute Resolution to give us an opportunity to make some real progress on that topic which is relevant to us.

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DISPUTE RESOLUTION

The final half-hour was devoted to Enforcement/Dispute Resolution.  There are a couple of key points to pass along:

  1. The MH Coalition is removing the Enforcement aspect from this discussion for this legislative session in order to focus solely on the Dispute Resolution/Mediation aspect.
    • Background:
      • Enforcement was the original name given to this discussion.
      • Last year, Tenants requested a means to resolve issues when Landlords were clearly violating their ORS rights, yet did not require the Tenant to litigate in order to get the Landlord to stop the violations.
    • This is not exactly the best news to have it removed.  This means that, for now, Tenants will need to continue to cover the costs of litigation should they feel as though their rights are being violated by a Landlord.
    • The reason given to remove Enforcement from the discussion at this time is because:
      • It is widely understood that the nature of most of the issues between Landlords and Tenants can be resolved through legislation to require Landlords to participate in Mediation and Dispute Resolution.
      • Generally, most Landlords and Tenants agree that mediation and dispute resolution could be beneficial to both parties.  But, finding government funding for litigation help is a far trickier problem to solve.  In the interest of being able to draft meaningful legislation that might actually get passed in 2019, it is imperative that we simplify the issue or else no progress on any aspect of this issue will be made.
  2. So, while mandatory mediation could help when you have certain issues with your Landlord (for example, perhaps you want to park an RV onsite temporarily and your marina Landlord won’t permit it), there are going to be issues that are not suitable for mediation either because they are too big or too controversial (for example, when a Landlord is violating your rights and refuses to stop).
  3. The MH Coalition may add Enforcement back in for discussion in 2019.
  4. IMPORTANT NOTE:  Currently, MCRC helps manufactured home tenants through voluntary mediation because of the $10 assessment they pay to fund the group.  Floating home tenants do not currently have access to the MCRC because we do not pay the $10 per year tax.  This is one of the key things we are trying to change at the Marina Subcommittee level.  We want access to this valuable resource!!  If we do get eligibility to use this resource in 2019, and if the MH Coalition can come to an agreement on mandatory mediation and get is also passed into law, then we will have a whole new set of tools to use to help protect our rights.

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NEXT MARINA ISSUES SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING

I also would like to report that I have been asking John DiLorenzo (MH Coalition voting representative for landlords) to set the date of the next Marina Issues Subcommittee since May 25th and again at Tuesday’s meeting.  Apparently, we are waiting for the Landlords to have a luncheon where they will discuss things and get on the same page about our issues we presented on May 16th.  Somehow, Tenants managed to meet twice for a total of 6 hours together in preparation for our May 16th presentation.  So I find it hard to believe that 30 Landlords have had 36 days to meet in reaction to our presentation and have chosen not to do so.  In any case, I expressed an urgency today to get this meeting calendared through DiLorenzo, and he has responded by asking for our patience.  So hopefully we will hear back soon.  I will add this event to this site as soon as I have it.

What to Expect at the June 19th MH Coalition Meeting

We will be discussing 2 items relevant to Floating Home Owners:
  1. Enforcement/Dispute Resolution – Finding ways for issues between marina landlords and tenants to be resolved without litigation.  Good laws are already on the books, but what do we do when our rights have been violated by a marina owner and currently our only recourse is to take them to court which involves attorneys and cost, and can place us in greater threat of eviction.  We are discussing possible laws and programs which can help us get the support we need.
  2. Terminations/Evictions – Landlords want easier ways to fast-track the eviction process and tenants want more clarity in the language of the current law so that you can’t get evicted for minor infractions of your marina rules.  Come prepared to discuss your ideas (review ORS Chapter 90.630 – how and for what reasons a landlord can evict you) in preparation.  We need to make sure that landlords do not gain more power to evict and we need to reduce the uncertainty of the current eviction language in the law so that a judge can’t grant an eviction because your dog was off-leash or because you were seen running on the docks twice within a 6-month timeframe.

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If you haven’t already, now is a great time to review your lease.  This consists of three items: (1) the Marina Statement of Policy, (2) Marina Rules and (3) your Rental Agreement.  The lease you signed, and the rules you agreed to, may be different from the current leases and sets of rules at the marina.

If you don’t have a copy of your lease, your marina owner must supply one to you (ORS 90.510).  Make sure they provide you with a copy of the lease that you signed – not the current lease or current set of rules at the marina.

Once you have your lease, review the marina rules you signed and think through which ones, if broken, should be grounds for eviction and which rule violations should be considered minor rules infractions, instead of causing you to lose your home.

See you there!

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Manufactured Housing Landlord/Tenant Coalition will be held on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, from 9 to noon.

This meeting will be held at the Tigard office of Multifamily NW, at 16083 SW Upper Boones Ferry Road, #105 (first floor, front of the building).

The call-in number here is 515-604-9000, passcode 948800.